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I don't know that she is as amusing as she was when she was a child, but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love them.

It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them."

Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in Avonlea the Mayflowers were peeping pinkly out on the sere barrens where snow-wreaths lingered; and the "mist of green" was on the woods and in the valleys.

But in Charlottetown harassed Queen's students thought and talked only of examinations.

"It doesn't seem possible that the term is nearly over," said Anne.

"Why, last fall it seemed so long to look forward to-a whole winter of studies and classes.

And here we are, with the exams looming up next week.

Girls, sometimes I feel as if those exams meant everything, but when I look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and the misty blue air at the end of the streets they don't seem half so important."

Jane and Ruby and Josie, who had dropped in, did not take this view of it.

To them the coming examinations were constantly very important indeed-far more important than chestnut buds or Maytime hazes.

It was all very well for Anne, who was sure of passing at least, to have her moments of belittling them, but when your whole future depended on them-as the girls truly thought theirs did-you could not regard them philosophically.

"I've lost seven pounds in the last two weeks," sighed Jane.

"It's no use to say don't worry.

I WILL worry.

Worrying helps you some-it seems as if you were doing something when you're worrying.

It would be dreadful if I failed to get my license after going to Queen's all winter and spending so much money."

"I don't care," said Josie Pye. "If I don't pass this year I'm coming back next. My father can afford to send me. Anne, Frank Stockley says that Professor Tremaine said Gilbert Blythe was sure to get the medal and that Emily Clay would likely win the Avery scholarship."

"That may make me feel badly tomorrow, Josie," laughed Anne, "but just now I honestly feel that as long as I know the violets are coming out all purple down in the hollow below Green Gables and that little ferns are poking their heads up in Lovers' Lane, it's not a great deal of difference whether I win the Avery or not.

I've done my best and I begin 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

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