LITMIR.BIZ

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did not know that a wistful little Elizabeth was watching out of one of the mansard windows of The Evergreens as she drove away from Windy Poplars … an Elizabeth with tears in her eyes who felt as if everything that made life worth living had gone out of her life for the time being and that she was the very Lizziest of Lizzies. But when the livery sleigh vanished from her sight around the corner of Spook’s Lane Elizabeth went and knelt down by her bed.

      “Dear God,” she whispered, “I know it isn’t any use to ask You for a merry Christmas for me because Grandmother and The Woman couldn’t be merry, but please let my dear Miss Shirley have a merry, merry Christmas and bring her back safe to me when it’s over.

      “Now,” said Elizabeth, getting up from her knees, “I’ve done all that I can.”

      Anne was already tasting Christmas happiness. She fairly sparkled as the train left the station. The ugly streets slipped past her … she was going home … home to Green Gables. Out in the open country the world was all golden-white and pale violet, woven here and there with the dark magic of spruces and the leafless delicacy of birches. The low sun behind the bare woods seemed rushing through the trees like a splendid god, as the train sped on. Katherine was silent but did not seem ungracious.

      “Don’t expect me to talk,” she had warned Anne curtly.

      “I won’t. I hope you don’t think I’m one of those terrible people who make you feel that you have to talk to them all the time. We’ll just talk when we feel like it. I admit I’m likely to feel like it a good part of the time, but you’re under no obligation to take any notice of what I’m saying.”

      Davy met them at Bright River with a big two-seated sleigh full of furry robes … and a bear hug for Anne. The two girls snuggled down in the back seat. The drive from the station to Green Gables had always been a very pleasant part of Anne’s weekends home. She always recalled her first drive home from Bright River with Matthew. That had been in spring and this was December, but everything along the road kept saying to her, “Do you remember?” The snow crisped under the runners; the music of the bells tinkled through the ranks of tall pointed firs, snow-laden. The White Way of Delight had little festoons of stars tangled in the trees. And on the last hill but one they saw the great gulf, white and mystical under the moon but not yet ice-bound.

      “There’s just one spot on this road where I always feel suddenly … ‘I’m home,’” said Anne. “It’s the top of the next hill, where we’ll see the lights of Green Gables. I’m just thinking of the supper Marilla will have ready for us. I believe I can smell it here. Oh, it’s good … good … good to be home again!”

      At Green Gables every tree in the yard seemed to welcome her back … every lighted window was beckoning. And how good Marilla’s kitchen smelled as they opened the door. There were hugs and exclamations and laughter. Even Katherine seemed somehow no outsider, but one of them. Mrs. Rachel Lynde had set her cherished parlor lamp on the supper-table and lighted it. It was really a hideous thing with a hideous red globe, but what a warm rosy becoming light it cast over everything! How warm and friendly were the shadows! How pretty Dora was growing! And Davy really seemed almost a man.

      There was news to tell. Diana had a small daughter … Josie Pye actually had a young man … and Charlie Sloane was said to be engaged. It was all just as exciting as news of empire could have been. Mrs. Lynde’s new patchwork quilt, just completed, containing five thousand pieces, was on display and received its meed of praise.

      “When you come home, Anne,” said Davy, “everything seems to come alive.”

      “Ah, this is how life should be,” purred Dora’s kitten.

      “I’ve always found it hard to resist the lure of a moonlight night,” said Anne after supper. “How about a snowshoe tramp, Miss Brooke? I think that I’ve heard that you snowshoe.”

      “Yes … it’s the only thing I can do … but I haven’t done it for six years,” said Katherine with a shrug.

      Anne rooted out her snowshoes from the garret and Davy shot over to Orchard Slope to borrow an old pair of Diana’s for Katherine. They went through Lover’s Lane, full of lovely tree shadows, and across fields where little fir trees fringed the fences and through woods which were full of secrets they seemed always on the point of whispering to you but never did … and through open glades that were like pools of silver.

      They did not talk or want to talk. It was as if they were afraid to talk for fear of spoiling something beautiful. But Anne had never felt so near Katherine Brooke before. By some magic of its own the winter night had brought them together … almost together but not quite.

      When they came out to the main road and a sleigh flashed by, bells ringing, laughter tinkling, both girls gave an involuntary sigh. It seemed to both that they were leaving behind a world that had nothing in common with the one to which they were returning … a world where time was not … which was young with immortal youth … where souls communed with each other in some medium that needed nothing so crude as words.

      “It’s been wonderful,” said Katherine so obviously to herself that Anne made no response.

      They went down the road and up the long Green Gables lane but just before they reached the yard gate, they both paused as by a common impulse and stood in silence, leaning against the old mossy fence and looked at the brooding, motherly old house seen dimly through its veil of trees. How beautiful Green Gables was on a winter night!

      Below it the Lake of Shining Waters was locked in ice, patterned around its edges with tree shadows. Silence was everywhere, save for the staccato clip of a horse trotting over the bridge. Anne smiled to recall how often she had heard that sound as she lay in her gable room and pretended to herself that it was the gallop of fairy horses passing in the night.

      Suddenly another sound broke the stillness.

      “Katherine … you’re … why, you’re not crying!”

      Somehow, it seemed impossible to think of Katherine crying. But she was. And her tears suddenly humanized her. Anne no longer felt afraid of her.

      “Katherine … dear Katherine … what is the matter? Can I help?”

      “Oh … you can’t understand!” gasped Katherine. “Things have always been made easy for you. You … you seem to live in a little enchanted circle of beauty and romance. ‘I wonder what delightful discovery I’ll make today’ … that seems to be your attitude to life, Anne. As for me, I’ve forgotten how to live … no, I never knew how. I’m … I’m like a creature caught in a trap. I can never get out … and it seems to me that somebody is always poking sticks at me through the bars. And you … you have more happiness than you know what to do with … friends everywhere, a lover! Not that I want a lover … I hate men … but if I died tonight, not one living soul would miss me. How would you like to be absolutely friendless in the world?”

      Katherine’s voice broke in another sob.

      “Katherine, you say you like frankness. I’m going to be frank. If you are as friendless as you say, it is your own fault. I’ve wanted to be friends with you. But you’ve been all prickles and stings.”

      “Oh, I know … I know. How I hated you when you came first! Flaunting your circlet of pearls …”

      “Katherine, I didn’t ‘flaunt’ it!”

      “Oh, I suppose not. That’s just my natural hatefulness. But it seemed to flaunt itself … not that I envied you your beau … I’ve never wanted to be married … I saw enough of that with father and mother … but I hated your being over me when you were younger than I … I was glad when the Pringles made trouble for you. You seemed to have everything I hadn’t … charm … friendship … youth. Youth! I never had anything but starved youth. You know nothing about it. You don’t know … you haven’t the least idea what it is like not to be wanted by any one … any one!”

      “Oh, haven’t I?”

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