Page:Anne's house of dreams (1920 Canada).djvu/163

 glorious spin Gilbert and Anne and Leslie had over the glib harbor ice with him. Anne and Leslie took long snowshoe tramps together, too, over the fields, or across the harbor after storms, or through the woods beyond the Glen. They were very good comrades in their rambles and their fireside communings. Each had something to give the other—each felt life the richer for friendly exchange of thought and friendly silence; each looked across the white fields between their homes with a pleasant consciousness of a friend beyond. But, in spite of all this, Anne felt that there was always a barrier between Leslie and herself—a constraint that never wholly vanished.

“I don’t know why I can’t get closer to her,” Anne said one evening to Captain Jim. “I like her so much—I admire her so much—I want to take her right into my heart and creep right into hers. But I can never cross the barrier.”

“You’ve been too happy all your life, Mistress Blythe,” said Captain Jim thoughtfully. “I reckon that’s why you and Leslie can’t get real close together in your souls. The barrier between you is her experience of sorrow and trouble. She ain’t responsible for it and you ain’t; but it’s there and neither of you can cross it.”

“My childhood wasn’t very happy before I came to Green Gables,” said Anne, gazing soberly out of the window at the still, sad, dead beauty of the leafless tree-shadows on the moonlit snow.