"I'm glad--I wanted you to know--but I couldn't bring myself to talk of it if you hadn't known. Anne, it seems to me that ever since I was twelve years old life has been bitter. Before that I had a happy childhood.
We were very poor--but we didn't mind. Father was so splendid--so clever and loving and sympathetic. We were chums as far back as I can remember. And mother was so sweet. She was very, very beautiful. I look like her, but I am not so beautiful as she was.""Miss Cornelia says you are far more beautiful.""She is mistaken--or prejudiced. I think my figure ISbetter-- mother was slight and bent by hard work--but she had the face of an angel. I used just to look up at her in worship. We all worshipped her,--father and Kenneth and I."Anne remembered that Miss Cornelia had given her a very different impression of Leslie's mother. But had not love the truer vision? Still, it WAS selfish of Rose West to make her daughter marry **** Moore.
"Kenneth was my brother," went on Leslie. "Oh, Ican't tell you how I loved him. And he was cruelly killed. Do you know how?""Yes."
"Anne, I saw his little face as the wheel went over him. He fell on his back. Anne--Anne--I can see it now. I shall always see it. Anne, all I ask of heaven is that that recollection shall be blotted out of my memory. O my God!""Leslie, don't speak of it. I know the story--don't go into details that only harrow your soul up unavailingly. It WILL be blotted out."After a moment's struggle, Leslie regained a measure of self- control.
"Then father's health got worse and he grew despondent--his mind became unbalanced--you've heard all that, too?""Yes."
"After that I had just mother to live for. But I was very ambitious. I meant to teach and earn my way through college. I meant to climb to the very top--oh, I won't talk of that either. It's no use. You know what happened. I couldn't see my dear little heart-broken mother, who had been such a slave all her life, turned out of her home. Of course, I could have earned enough for us to live on. But mother COULDN'Tleave her home. She had come there as a bride--and she had loved father so--and all her memories were there.
Even yet, Anne, when I think that I made her last year happy I'm not sorry for what I did. As for ****--Ididn't hate him when I married him--I just felt for him the indifferent, friendly feeling I had for most of my schoolmates. I knew he drank some--but I had never heard the story of the girl down at the fishing cove.
If I had, I COULDN'T have married him, even for mother's sake. Afterwards--I DID hate him--but mother never knew. She died--and then I was alone. I was only seventeen and I was alone. **** had gone off in the Four Sisters. I hoped he wouldn't be home very much more. The sea had always been in his blood. Ihad no other hope. Well, Captain Jim brought him home, as you know--and that's all there is to say. You know me now, Anne--the worst of me--the barriers are all down. And you still want to be my friend?"Anne looked up through the birches, at the white paper-lantern of a half moon drifting downwards to the gulf of sunset. Her face was very sweet.
"I am your friend and you are mine, for always," she said. "Such a friend as I never had before. I have had many dear and beloved friends--but there is a something in you, Leslie, that I never found in anyone else. You have more to offer me in that rich nature of yours, and I have more to give you than I had in my careless girlhood. We are both women--and friends forever."They clasped hands and smiled at each other through the tears that filled the gray eyes and the blue.
