She was building a castle in air — a wondrous mansion whose sunlit courts and stately halls were steeped in Araby’s perfume, and where she reigned queen and chatelaine. She frowned as she saw Gilbert coming through the orchard. Of late she had managed not to be left alone with Gilbert. But he had caught her fairly now; and even Rusty had deserted her.
Gilbert sat down beside her on the boulder and held out his Mayflowers.
“Don’t these remind you of home and our old schoolday picnics, Anne?”
Anne took them and buried her face in them.
“I’m in Mr. Silas Sloane’s barrens this very minute,” she said rapturously.
“I suppose you will be there in reality in a few days?”
“No, not for a fortnight. I’m going to visit with Phil in Bolingbroke before I go home. You’ll be in Avonlea before I will.”
“No, I shall not be in Avonlea at all this summer, Anne. I’ve been offered a job in the Daily News office and I’m going to take it.”
“Oh,” said Anne vaguely. She wondered what a whole Avonlea summer would be like without Gilbert. Somehow she did not like the prospect. “Well,” she concluded flatly, “it is a good thing for you, of course.”
“Yes, I’ve been hoping I would get it. It will help me out next year.”
“You mustn’t work too HARD,” said Anne, without any very clear idea of what she was saying. She wished desperately that Phil would come out. “You’ve studied very constantly this winter. Isn’t this a delightful evening? Do you know, I found a cluster of white violets under that old twisted tree over there today? I felt as if I had discovered a gold mine.”
“You are always discovering gold mines,” said Gilbert — also absently.
“Let us go and see if we can find some more,” suggested Anne eagerly. “I’ll call Phil and—”
“Never mind Phil and the violets just now, Anne,” said Gilbert quietly, taking her hand in a clasp from which she could not free it. “There is something I want to say to you.”
“Oh, don’t say it,” cried Anne, pleadingly. “Don’t — PLEASE, Gilbert.”
“I must. Things can’t go on like this any longer. Anne, I love you. You know I do. I — I can’t tell you how much. Will you promise me that some day you’ll be my wife?”
“I — I can’t,” said Anne miserably. “Oh, Gilbert — you — you’ve spoiled everything.”
“Don’t you care for me at all?” Gilbert asked after a very dreadful pause, during which Anne had not dared to look up.
“Not — not in that way. I do care a great deal for you as a friend. But I don’t love you, Gilbert.”
“But can’t you give me some hope that you will — yet?”
“No, I can’t,” exclaimed Anne desperately. “I never, never can love you — in that way — Gilbert. You must never speak of this to me again.”
There was another pause — so long and so dreadful that Anne was driven at last to look up. Gilbert’s face was white to the lips. And his eyes — but Anne shuddered and looked away. There was nothing romantic about this. Must proposals be either grotesque or — horrible? Could she ever forget Gilbert’s face?
“Is there anybody else?” he asked at last in a low voice.
“No — no,” said Anne eagerly. “I don’t care for any one like THAT — and I LIKE you better than anybody else in the world, Gilbert. And we must — we must go on being friends, Gilbert.”
Gilbert gave a bitter little laugh.
“Friends! Your friendship can’t satisfy me, Anne. I want your love — and you tell me I can never have that.”
“I’m sorry. Forgive me, Gilbert,” was all Anne could say. Where, oh, where were all the gracious and graceful speeches wherewith, in imagination, she had been wont to dismiss rejected suitors?
Gilbert released her hand gently.
“There isn’t anything to forgive. There have been times when I thought you did care. I’ve deceived myself, that’s all. Goodbye, Anne.”
Anne got herself to her room, sat down on her window seat behind the pines, and cried bitterly. She felt as if something incalculably precious had gone out of her life. It was Gilbert’s friendship, of course. Oh, why must she lose it after this fashion?
“What is the matter, honey?” asked Phil, coming in through the moonlit gloom.
Anne did not answer. At that moment she wished Phil were a thousand miles away.
“I suppose you’ve gone and refused Gilbert Blythe. You are an idiot, Anne Shirley!”
“Do you call it idiotic to refuse to marry a man I don’t love?” said Anne coldly, goaded to reply.
“You don’t know love when you see it. You’ve tricked something out with your imagination that you think love, and you expect the real thing to look like that. There, that’s the first sensible thing I’ve ever said in my life. I wonder how I managed it?”
“Phil,” pleaded Anne, “please go away and leave me alone for a little while. My world has tumbled into pieces. I want to reconstruct it.”
“Without any Gilbert in it?” said Phil, going.
A world without any Gilbert in it! Anne repeated the words drearily. Would it not be a very lonely, forlorn place? Well, it was all Gilbert’s fault. He had spoiled their beautiful comradeship. She must just learn to live without it.
Chapter XXI
Roses of Yesterday
The fortnight Anne spent in Bolingbroke was a very pleasant one, with a little under current of vague pain and dissatisfaction running through it whenever she thought about Gilbert. There was not, however, much time to think about him. “Mount Holly,” the beautiful old Gordon homestead, was a very gay place, overrun by Phil’s friends of both sexes. There was quite a bewildering succession of drives, dances, picnics and boating parties, all expressively lumped together by Phil under the head of “jamborees”; Alec and Alonzo were so constantly on hand that Anne wondered if they ever did anything but dance attendance on that will-o’-the-wisp of a Phil. They were both nice, manly fellows, but Anne would not be drawn into any opinion as to which was the nicer.
“And I depended so on you to help me make up my mind which of them I should promise to marry,” mourned Phil.
“You must do that for yourself. You are quite expert at making up your mind as to whom other people should marry,” retorted Anne, rather caustically.
“Oh,
