"I--I suppose so," said Anne reluctantly. She felt that she ought to be
blushing while making such a confession; but she was not; on the other
hand, she always blushed hotly when any one said anything about Gilbert
Blythe or Christine Stuart in her hearing. Gilbert Blythe and Christine
Stuart were nothing to her--absolutely nothing. But Anne had given up
trying to analyze the reason of her blushes. As for Roy, of course she
was in love with him--madly so. How could she help it? Was he not her
ideal? Who could resist those glorious dark eyes, and that pleading
voice? Were not half the Redmond girls wildly envious? And what a
charming sonnet he had sent her, with a box of violets, on her birthday!
Anne knew every word of it by heart. It was very good stuff of its kind,
too. Not exactly up to the level of Keats or Shakespeare--even Anne
was not so deeply in love as to think that. But it was very tolerable
magazine verse. And it was addressed to HER--not to Laura or Beatrice or
the Maid of Athens, but to her, Anne Shirley. To be told in rhythmical
cadences that her eyes were stars of the morning--that her cheek had
the flush it stole from the sunrise--that her lips were redder than the
roses of Paradise, was thrillingly romantic. Gilbert would never have
dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows. But then, Gilbert could
see a joke. She had once told Roy a funny story--and he had not seen
the point of it. She recalled the chummy laugh she and Gilbert had had
together over it, and wondered uneasily if life with a man who had no
sense of humor might not be somewhat uninteresting in the long run. But
who could expect a melancholy, inscrutable hero to see the humorous side
of things? It would be flatly unreasonable.