tree; her hair was like a soft, dusky cloud; and her eyes were as
blue as Avonlea harbor on a fair twilight, when all the sky is
abloom over it. She had dark lashes, and a little red mouth that
quivered when she was very sad or very happy, or when she loved
very much--quivered like a crimson rose too rudely shaken by
the wind. At such times what was a man to do save kiss it?

The next spring we were married, and I brought her home to my
gray old homestead on the gray old harbor shore. A lonely place
for a young bride, said Avonlea people. Nay, it was not so. She
was happy here, even in my absences. She loved the great,
restless harbor and the vast, misty sea beyond; she loved the
tides, keeping their world-old tryst with the shore, and the
gulls, and the croon of the waves, and the call of the winds in
the fir woods at noon and even; she loved the moonrises and the
sunsets, and the clear, calm nights when the stars seemed to have
fallen into the water and to be a little dizzy from such a fall.
She loved these things, even as I did. No, she was never lonely
here then.

The third spring came, and our boy was born. We thought we had
been happy before; now we knew that we had only dreamed a
pleasant dream of happiness, and had awakened to this exquisite
reality. We thought we had loved each other before; now, as I
looked into my wife's pale face, blanched with its baptism of
pain, and met the uplifted gaze of her blue eyes, aglow with the
holy passion of motherhood, I knew we had only imagined what love
might be. The imagination had been sweet, as the thought of the
rose is sweet before the bud is open; but as the rose to the
thought, so was love to the imagination of it.