第52章

"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 Dick 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 Dick--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. Dick 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.