rouble is, my mind
changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again."

"Well, I suppose there is no use in saying anything to you."

"There is no need, Phil. I'm in the dust. This has spoiled everything
backwards. I can never think of Redmond days without recalling the
humiliation of this evening. Roy despises me--and you despise me--and I
despise myself."

"You poor darling," said Phil, melting. "Just come here and let me
comfort you. I've no right to scold you. I'd have married Alec or Alonzo
if I hadn't met Jo. Oh, Anne, things are so mixed-up in real life. They
aren't clear-cut and trimmed off, as they are in novels."

"I hope that NO one will ever again ask me to marry him as long as I
live," sobbed poor Anne, devoutly believing that she meant it.

Chapter XXXIX

Deals with Weddings

Anne felt that life partook of the nature of an anticlimax during the
first few weeks after her return to Green Gables. She missed the merry
comradeship of Patty's Place. She had dreamed some brilliant dreams
during the past winter and now they lay in the dust around her. In her
present mood of self-disgust, she could not immediately begin dreaming
again. And she discovered that, while solitude with dreams is glorious,
solitude without them has few charms.

She had not seen Roy again after their painful parting in the park
pavilion; but Dorothy came to see her before she left Kingsport.

"I'm awfully sorry you won't marry Roy," she said. "I did want you for a
sister. But you are quite right. He would bore you to death. I love him,
and he is a dear sweet boy, but really he isn't a bit interesting. He
looks as if he ought to be, but he isn't."

"This won't spoil OUR friendship, will it, Dorothy?" Anne had asked
wistfully.

"No, indeed. You're too good to lose. If I can't have you for a sister
I mean to keep you as a chum anyway. And don't fret over Roy. He is
feeling terribly just now--I have to listen to his outpourings every
day--but he'll get over it. He always does."

"Oh--ALWAYS?" said Anne with a slight change of voice. "So he has 'got
over it' before?"

"Dear me, yes," said Dorothy frankly. "Twice before. And he raved to me
just the same both times. Not that the others actually refused him--they
simply announced their engagements to some one else. Of course, when he
met you he vowed to me that he had never really loved before--that the
previous affairs had been merely boyish fancies. But I d