Hester beckoned to me and said,

"Come."

I stood up and followed her out of the garden. We walked side by
side down our lane, under the willows and out to the road, which
lay long and still in that bright, calm moonshine. I felt as if
I were in a dream, moving at the bidding of a will not my own,
which I could not have disputed even if I had wished to do so.
But I did not wish it; I had only the feeling of a strange,
boundless content.

We went down the road between the growths of young fir that
bordered it. I smelled their balsam as we passed, and noticed
how clearly and darkly their pointed tops came out against the
sky. I heard the tread of my own feet on little twigs and plants
in our way, and the trail of my dress over the grass; but Hester
moved noiselessly.

Then we went through the Avenue--that stretch of road under the
apple trees that Anne Shirley, over at Avonlea, calls "The White
Way of Delight." It was almost dark here; and yet I could see
Hester's face just as plainly as if the moon were shining on it;
and whenever I looked at her she was always looking at me with
that strangely gentle smile on her lips.

Just as we passed out of the Avenue, James Trent overtook us,
driving. It seems to me that our feelings at a given moment are
seldom what we would expect them to be. I simply felt annoyed
that James Trent, the most notorious gossip in Newbridge, should