to understand what is meant by the joy of the strife. Next to trying
and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. Girls, don t talk
about exams! Look at that arch of pale green sky over those houses
and picture to yourself what it must look like over the purply-dark
beech-woods back of Avonlea.
What are you going to wear for commencement, Jane? asked Ruby
practically.
Jane and Josie both answered at once and the chatter drifted into a side
eddy of fashions. But Anne, with her elbows on the window sill, her soft
cheek laid against her clasped hands, and her eyes filled with visions,
looked out unheedingly across city roof and spire to that glorious dome
of sunset sky and wove her dreams of a possible future from the golden
tissue of youth s own optimism. All the Beyond was hers with its
possibilities lurking rosily in the oncoming years--each year a rose of
promise to be woven into an immortal chaplet.
CHAPTER XXXVI. The Glory and the Dream
ON the morning when the final results of all the examinations were to be
posted on the bulletin board at Queen s, Anne and Jane walked down the
street together. Jane was smiling and happy; examinations were over
and she was comfortably sure she had made a pass at least; further
considerations troubled Jane not at all; she had no soaring ambitions
and consequently was not affected with the unrest attendant thereon. For
we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although
ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but
exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.
Anne was pale and quiet; in ten more minutes she would know who had
won the medal and who the Avery. Beyond those ten minutes there did not
seem, just then, to be anything worth being called Time.
Of course you ll win one of them anyhow, said Jane, who couldn t
understand how the faculty could be so unfair as to order it otherwise.
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