Page:Anne's house of dreams (1920 Canada).djvu/73

 said Anne. “That desire which comes to us all at times—‘to sail beyond the bourne of sunset’—must be very imperious when it is born in you. I don’t wonder Captain Jim ran away because of it. I never see a ship sailing out of the channel, or a gull soaring over the sand-bar, without wishing I were on board the ship or had wings, not like a dove ‘to fly away and be at rest,’ but like a gull, to sweep out into the very heart of a storm.”

“You’ll stay right here with me, Anne-girl,” said Gilbert lazily. “I won’t have you flying away from me into the hearts of storms.”

They were sitting on their red sand-stone doorstep in the late afternoon. Great tranquillities were all about them in land and sea and sky. Silvery gulls were soaring over them. The horizons were laced with long trails of frail, pinkish clouds. The hushed air was threaded with a murmurous refrain of minstrel winds and waves. Pale asters were blowing in the sere and misty meadows between them and the harbor.

“Doctors who have to be up all night waiting on sick folk don’t feel very adventurous, I suppose,” Anne said indulgently. “If you had had a good sleep last night, Gilbert, you’d be as ready as I am for a flight of imagination.”

“I did good work last night, Anne,” said Gilbert quietly. “Under God, I saved a life. This is the first time I could ever really claim that. In other cases I