"I must cry," said Anne. "My heart is broken. The stars in their
courses fight against me, Marilla. Diana and I are parted forever.

Oh, Marilla, I little dreamed of this when first we swore our vows
of friendship."

"Don't be foolish, Anne. Mrs. Barry will think better of it
when she finds you're not to blame. I suppose she thinks you've

done it for a silly joke or something of that sort. You'd best
go up this evening and tell her how it was."

"My courage fails me at the thought of facing Diana's injured
mother," sighed Anne. "I wish you'd go, Marilla. You're so much

more dignified than I am. Likely she'd listen to you quicker
than to me."

"Well, I will," said Marilla, reflecting that it would probably
be the wiser course. "Don't cry any more, Anne. It will be all

right."
Marilla had changed her mind about it being all right by the time

she got back from Orchard Slope. Anne was watching for her
coming and flew to the porch door to meet her.

"Oh, Marilla, I know by your face that it's been no use," she
said sorrowfully. "Mrs. Barry won't forgive me?"

"Mrs. Barry indeed!" snapped Marilla. "Of all the unreasonable
women I ever saw she's the worst. I told her it was all a

mistake and you weren't to blame, but she just simply didn't
believe me. And she rubbed it well in about my currant wine and

how I'd always said it couldn't have the least effect on anybody.
I just told her plainly that currant wine wasn't meant to be

drunk three tumblerfuls at a time and that if a child I had to do
with was so greedy I'd sober her up with a right good spanking."

Marilla whisked into the kitchen, grievously disturbed, leaving a
very much distracted little soul in the porch behind her.

Presently Anne stepped out bareheaded into the chill autumn dusk;
very determinedly and steadily she took her way down through the

sere clover field over the log bridge and up through the spruce
grove, lighted by a pale little moon hanging low over the western

woods. Mrs. Barry, coming to the door in answer to a timid
knock, found a white-lipped eager-eyed suppliant on the doorstep.

Her face hardened. Mrs. Barry was a woman of strong prejudices
and dislikes, and her anger was of the cold, sullen sort which is

always hardest to overcome. To do her justice, she really
believed Anne had made Diana drunk out of sheer malice prepense,???

and she was honestlyanxious to preserve her little daughter from
the contamination of further intimacy with such a child.

"What do you want?" she said stiffly.
Anne clasped her hands.

"Oh, Mrs. Barry, please forgive me. I did not mean
to--to--intoxicate Diana. How could I? Just imagine if you were

a poor little orphan girl that kind people had adopted and you
had just one bosom friend in all the world. Do you think you

would intoxicate her on purpose? I thought it was only raspberry
cordial. I was firmly convinced it was raspberry cordial. Oh,

please don't say that you won't let Diana play with me any more.
If you do you will cover my life with a dark cloud of woe."

This speech which would have softened good Mrs. Lynde's heart in
a twinkling, had no effect on Mrs. Barry except to irritate her

still more. She was suspicious of Anne's big words and dramatic
gestures and imagined that the child was making fun of her. So

she said, coldly and cruelly:
"I don't think you are a fit little girl for Diana to associate

with. You'd better go home and behave yourself."
Anne's lips quivered.

"Won't you let me see Diana just once to say farewell?" she
implored.

"Diana has gone over to Carmody with her father," said Mrs.
Barry, going in and shutting the door.

Anne went back to Green Gables calm with despair.
"My last hope is gone," she told Marilla. "I went up and saw

Mrs. Barry myself and she treated me very insultingly. Marilla,
I do NOT think she is a well-bred woman. There is nothing more

to do except to pray and I haven't much hope that that'll do much
good because, Marilla, I do not believe that God Himself can do

very much with such an obstinate person as Mrs. Barry."
"Anne, you shouldn't say such things" rebuked Marilla, striving

to overcome that unholy tendency to laughter which she was
dismayed to find growing upon her. And indeed, when she told the

whole story to Matthew that night, she did laugh heartily over
Anne's tribulations.

But when she slipped into the east gable before going to bed and
found that Anne had cried herself to sleep an unaccustomed

softness crept into her face.
"Poor little soul," she murmured, lifting a loose curl of hair

from the child's tear-stained face. Then she bent down and
kissed the flushed cheek on the pillow.

CHAPTER XVII
A New Interest in Life

THE next afternoon Anne, bending over her patchwork at the
kitchen window, happened to glance out and beheld Diana down by

the Dryad's Bubble beckoning mysteriously. In a trice Anne was
out of the house and flying down to the hollow, astonishment and

hope struggling in her expressive eyes. But the hope faded when
she saw Diana's dejected countenance.

"Your mother hasn't relented?" she gasped.
Diana shook her head mournfully.

"No; and oh, Anne, she says I'm never to play with you again.
I've cried and cried and I told her it wasn't your fault, but it

wasn't any use. I had ever such a time coaxing her to let me
come down and say good-bye to you. She said I was only to stay

ten minutes and she's timing me by the clock."
"Ten minutes isn't very long to say an eternalfarewell in," said

Anne tearfully. "Oh, Diana, will you promise faithfully" target="_blank" title="ad.忠实地；诚恳地">faithfully never to
forget me, the friend of your youth, no matter what dearer

friends may caress thee?"
"Indeed I will," sobbed Diana, "and I'll never have another bosom

friend--I don't want to have. I couldn't love anybody as I love
you."

"Oh, Diana," cried Anne, clasping her hands, "do you LOVE me?"
"Why, of course I do. Didn't you know that?"

"No." Anne drew a long breath. "I thought you LIKED me of course
but I never hoped you LOVED me. Why, Diana, I didn't think

anybody could love me. Nobody ever has loved me since I can
remember. Oh, this is wonderful! It's a ray of light which will

forever shine on the darkness of a path severed from thee, Diana.
Oh, just say it once again."

"I love you devotedly, Anne," said Diana stanchly, "and I always
will, you may be sure of that."

"And I will always love thee, Diana," said Anne, solemnly
extending her hand. "In the years to come thy memory will shine

like a star over my lonely life, as that last story we read
together says. Diana, wilt thou give me a lock of thy jet-black

tresses in parting to treasure forevermore?"
"Have you got anything to cut it with?" queried Diana, wiping

away the tears which Anne's affecting accents had caused to flow
afresh, and returning to practicalities.

"Yes. I've got my patchwork scissors in my apron pocket
fortunately," said Anne. She solemnly clipped one of Diana's