Somehow, to Anne, Hazel recalled her own early youth, with all its raptures and ideals and romantic visions.
Hazel caught Anne’s hand and pressed her lips to it reverently.
“I hate all the people you have loved before me, Miss Shirley. I hate all the other people you love now. I want to possess you exclusively.”
“Aren’t you a bit unreasonable, honey? You love other people besides me. How about Terry, for example?”
“Oh, Miss Shirley! It’s that I want to talk to you about. I can’t endure it in silence any longer … I cannot. I must talk to some one about it … some one who understands. I went out the night before last and walked round and round the pond all night … well, nearly … till twelve, anyhow. I’ve suffered everything … everything.”
Hazel looked as tragic as a round, pink-and-white face, long-lashed eyes and a halo of curls would let her.
“Why, Hazel dear, I thought you and Terry were so happy … that everything was settled.”
Anne could not be blamed for thinking so. During the preceding three weeks, Hazel had raved to her about Terry Garland, for Hazel’s attitude was, what was the use of having a beau if you couldn’t talk to some one about him?
“Everybody thinks that,” retorted Hazel with great bitterness. “Oh, Miss Shirley, life seems so full of perplexing problems. I feel sometimes as if I wanted to lie down somewhere … anywhere … and fold my hands and never think again.”
“My dear girl, what has gone wrong?”
“Nothing … and everything. Oh, Miss Shirley, can I tell you all about it … can I pour out my whole soul to you?”
“Of course, dear.”
“I have really no place to pour out my soul,” said Hazel pathetically. “Except in my journal, of course. Will you let me show you my journal some day, Miss Shirley? It is a self-revelation. And yet I cannot write out what burns in my soul. It … it stifles me!” Hazel clutched dramatically at her throat.
“Of course I’d like to see it if you want me to. But what is this trouble between you and Terry?”
“Oh, Terry!! Miss Shirley, will you believe me when I tell you that Terry seems like a stranger to me? A stranger! Some one I’d never seen before,” added Hazel, so that there might be no mistake.
“But, Hazel … I thought you loved him … you said …”
“Oh, I know. I thought I loved him, too. But now I know it was all a terrible mistake. Oh, Miss Shirley, you can’t dream how difficult my life is … how impossible.”
“I know something about it,” said Anne sympathetically, remembering Roy Gardiner.
“Oh, Miss Shirley, I’m sure I don’t love him enough to marry him. I realize that now … now that it is too late. I was just moonlighted into thinking I loved him. If it hadn’t been for the moon I’m sure I would have asked for time to think it over. But I was swept off my feet … I can see that now. Oh, I’ll run away … I’ll do something desperate!”
“But, Hazel dear, if you feel you’ve made a mistake, why not just tell him …”
“Oh, Miss Shirley, I couldn’t! It would kill him. He simply adores me. There isn’t any way out of it really. And Terry’s beginning to talk of getting married. Think of it … a child like me … I’m only eighteen. All the friends I’ve told about my engagement as a secret are congratulating me … and it’s such a farce. They think Terry is a great catch because he comes into ten thousand dollars when he is twenty-five. His grandmother left it to him. As if I cared about such a sordid thing as money! Oh, Miss Shirley, why is it such a mercenary world … why?”
“I suppose it is mercenary in some respects, but not in all, Hazel. And if you feel like this about Terry … we all make mistakes … it’s very hard to know our own minds sometimes… .”
“Oh, isn’t it? I knew you’d understand. I did think I cared for him, Miss Shirley. The first time I saw him I just sat and gazed at him the whole evening. Waves went over me when I met his eyes. He was so handsome … though I thought even then that his hair was too curly and his eyelashes too white. That should have warned me. But I always put my soul into everything, you know … I’m so intense. I felt little shivers of ecstasy whenever he came near me. And now I feel nothing … nothing! Oh, I’ve grown old these past few weeks, Miss Shirley … old! I’ve hardly eaten anything since I got engaged. Mother could tell you. I’m sure I don’t love him enough to marry him. Whatever else I may be in doubt about, I know that.”
“Then you shouldn’t …”
“Even that moonlight night he proposed to me, I was thinking of what dress I’d wear to Joan Pringle’s fancy dress party. I thought it would be lovely to go as Queen of the May in pale green, with a sash of darker green and a cluster of pale pink roses in my hair. And a May-pole decked with tiny roses and hung with pink and green ribbons. Wouldn’t it have been fetching? And then Joan’s uncle had to go and die and Joan couldn’t have the party after all, so it all went for nothing. But the point is … I really couldn’t have loved him when my thoughts were wandering like that, could I?”
“I don’t know … our thoughts play us curious tricks some times.”
“I really don’t think I ever want to get married at all, Miss Shirley. Do you happen to have an orangewood stick handy? Thanks. My half-moons are getting ragged. I might as well do them while I’m talking. Isn’t it just lovely to be exchanging confidences like this? It’s so seldom one gets the opportunity … the world intrudes itself so. Well, what was I talking of … oh, yes, Terry. What am I to do, Miss Shirley? I want your advice. Oh, I feel like a trapped creature!”
“But, Hazel, it’s so very simple …”
“Oh, it isn’t simple at all, Miss Shirley! It’s dreadfully complicated. Mamma is so outrageously pleased, but Aunt Jean isn’t. She doesn’t like Terry, and everybody says she has such good judgment. I don’t want to marry anybody. I’m ambitious … I want a career. Sometimes I think I’d like to be a nun. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be the bride of heaven? I think the Catholic church is so picturesque, don’t you? But of course I’m not a Catholic … and anyway, I suppose you could hardly call it a career. I’ve always felt I’d love to be a nurse. It’s such a romantic profession, don’t you think? Smoothing fevered brows and all that … and some handsome millionaire patient falling in love with you and carrying you off to spend a honeymoon in a villa on the Riviera, facing the morning sun and the blue Mediterranean. I’ve seen myself in it. Foolish dreams, perhaps, but, oh, so sweet. I can’t give them up for the prosaic reality of marrying Terry Garland and settling down in Summerside!”
Hazel shivered at the very idea and scrutinized a half-moon critically.
“I suppose …” began Anne.
“We haven’t anything in common, you know, Miss Shirley. He doesn’t care for poetry and romance, and they’re my very life. Sometimes I think I must be a reincarnation of Cleopatra … or would
