You'll
help me, won't you?"
"I'll try, Walter," she said. "Oh, I will try."
As she clung to him with her face pressed against his shoulder she knew
that it had to be. She accepted the fact then and there. He must go--
her beautiful Walter with his beautiful soul and dreams and ideals. And
she had known all along that it would come sooner or later. She had seen
it coming to her--coming--coming--as one sees the shadow of a cloud
drawing near over a sunny field, swiftly and inescapably. Amid all her
pain she was conscious of an odd feeling of relief in some hidden part
of her soul, where a little dull, unacknowledged soreness had been
lurking all winter. No one--no one could ever call Walter a slacker
now.
Rilla did not sleep that night. Perhaps no one at Ingleside did except
Jims. The body grows slowly and steadily, but the soul grows by leaps
and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour. From that night
Rilla Blythe's soul was the soul of a woman in its capacity for
suffering, for strength, for endurance.
When the bitter dawn came she rose and went to her window. Below her was
a big apple-tree, a great swelling cone of rosy blossom. Walter had
planted it years ago when he was a little boy. Beyond Rainbow Valley
there was a cloudy shore of morning with little ripples of sunrise
breaking over it. The far, cold beauty of a lingering star shone above
it.
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