Everything that reminded
her of Jem was beginning to give intolerable pain. Walter's death had
inflicted on her heart a terrible wound. But it had been a clean wound
and had healed slowly, as such wounds do, though the scar must remain
for ever. But the torture of Jem's disappearance was another thing:
there was a poison in it that kept it from healing. The alternations of
hope and despair, the endless watching each day for the letter that
never came--that might never come--the newspaper tales of ill-usage of
prisoners--the bitter wonder as to Jem's wound--all were increasingly
hard to bear.
Gertrude Oliver turned her head. There was an odd brilliancy in her
eyes.
"Rilla, I've had another dream."
"Oh, no--no," cried Rilla, shrinking. Miss Oliver's dreams had always
foretold coming disaster.
"Rilla, it was a good dream. Listen--I dreamed just as I did four years
ago, that I stood on the veranda steps and looked down the Glen. And it
was still covered by waves that lapped about my feet. But as I looked
the waves began to ebb--and they ebbed as swiftly as, four years ago,
they rolled in--ebbed out and out, to the gulf; and the Glen lay before
me, beautiful and green, with a rainbow spanning Rainbow Valley--a
rainbow of such splendid colour that it dazzled me--and I woke. Rilla--
Rilla Blythe--the tide has turned."
"I wish I could believe it," sighed Rilla.
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