"Was it a good supper, then, Gil?" Anne asked.

She had worked the whole afternoon to make a more substantial meal than usual, a roast chicken, bread sauce, creamed peas and there was a fresh custard pie waiting for dessert with Gilbert's coffee; it has been several weeks since she had undertaken such an endeavor, the general unwellness of early pregnancy having taken much of the enjoyment from cooking for her husband, a task she had loved since the first day of their marriage. Her malaise was beginning to recede and in its wake, she had made some discoveries, exotic shells scattered on the silver shingle, some with inhabitants not quite congenial, and she had prepared herself to discuss some of them tonight.

"It was a wonderful supper, the best I can remember. If I had known you were such a fine cook, Anne-girl, I might have thrown over this doctoring long ago and taken up the farm as my father asked. This roast chicken would have tipped the scales and did I smell your custard pie?" he said with a chuckle.

"Yes, you do and I thank you for the compliment as would Marilla. I can't take credit for the preserves with the pie—those are Marilla's spiced plums from Green Gables, the last of what she sent, so we must make the most of them," Anne replied. He looked very content, did Gilbert Blythe, and she thought she would do well to sally forth.

"Do you know, when you asked what advice I was given upon our marriage, I never told you what Rachel Lynde said, did I?" she said, teasing him a little with her look and tone. She saw the answering light in his eyes and thought, soon enough, my love, but she meant to have her conversation first.

"I am quaking in my boots to hear, as you must have known, my wicked Mrs. Blythe," he said, softening his wry inflection with her name; he loved to say it and she to listen to the doting pride in his voice when he did.

"She told me she'd never known a Blythe who wasn't but that fond of a good dinner and that I should keep it in mind if I needed to sweeten your temper, or, how did she put it, "wheedle the man a bit." I believe she mentioned your father had once gobbled most of rhubarb pie at a church social and been called Pie-Face Blythe or Rhubarb-John for the rest of the school year. I must assume your mother is responsible for your much better manners," she said.

"Oh, Anne!" he laughed. She was canny and had hoped that to hear his stern father had once been mocked for a boy's common gluttony would make him smile, much as the carefully spiced and roasted chicken, the luxurious silkiness of the vanilla custard, the rich sunny sugar of Marilla's plums. She wanted him relaxed, willing to listen to something he might ordinarily summarily reject—for then where would she be?

"I do mean to ask you something, though, Gil. I'm afraid, and please be honest with me, I'm afraid I'm become a very dull wife already, a sorry disappointment to you, and you're too kind to say anything," she said, rushing through it a little but still hoping he would give her a thoughtful reply. She watched him and saw him stop himself before he made a quick, decrying response to her, saw him considering her and she made herself stay quiet and wait for him to speak.

"Well, I'm nothing but entirely in love with you, Anne, and I can't see for myself why you might think you were dull, but it seems to me that you must be wondering about it if you are asking. I don't think you mean how you've been unwell, I think that's not troubled you very much given the cause, but I have noticed, you don't seem to be writing much and I think some of these days must be lonely, if you haven't anyone to visit," he said, warmly affectionate but direct and aware she might not like what he said. She was glad she had asked at the table—if they were in the sitting room with evening's shadows falling, she was sure he would have said less and kissed more and his caresses, dear as they were, could not answer this question.

"I don't quite know what to make of it myself—I don't feel called to write in the same way and I do so love keeping house for you and tending our little circle of friends, Captain Jim and Leslie, Miss Cornelia, but do you know, Gil, this is the first year since I came to Green Gables that I haven't been at school, absorbed with my work and the other students? Sometimes I can't make sense of how last year I was surrounded by innumerable prickly Pringles and talking with Katherine about her dreams of Egypt, sailing the Nile amid clouds of incense, or foraging through the bazaars of Constantinople, I was so busy with so many people and ideas and I'm afraid soon enough, all I'll have to tell you is how big a codfish Captain Jim brought in Thursday last or that Miss Cornelia started knitting jerseys for all nine of the McTavish children in the most egregiously bright green wool and you'll be bored to tears with me!"

She'd begun reflectively but had ended a little hysterical, she admitted. And the idea that those comically small jerseys, all an aniline color nature had never known, could be the stuff of dullness seemed ironic, but the worry had beset her the past week and she'd finally decided to simply talk to Gilbert about it and ask for his practical insight, even if she didn't exactly like what he had to say. It was one thing to bare herself to him and know he would delight in her, but to ask him to honestly consider her flaws was a difficult task, though she knew it shouldn't be.

"Anne, I can't think you are remotely capable of dullness or boring anyone, certainly not me, but I agree your sphere has gotten smaller since we married… do you regret that I took on the practice here? We might have moved to a city, I had that offer in Toronto and the hospital in Charlottetown would have found me a spot, but Toronto seemed so far away and I know how you like to ramble about in the woods, keep a garden, I didn't think you'd be happy in a city…"

"No, Four Winds is perfect and I love it—I'm only unsure about me. I should hate to become one of those wives whose husbands overlook them, who are good for the supper and the laundry and minding the children, and not much else—and I haven't even been up to that for the past few weeks either," she said. She knew what she described was supposed to be enough for a happy marriage, but she didn't think it could be for Gilbert, nor for herself, not with her lovely dreams and the lovelier reality of their honeymoon, when to be two alone had been everything. She'd known it couldn't stay that way but she didn't know what was supposed to come next or who else to ask but Gilbert.

"How could I ever overlook you, Queen Anne? With those grey eyes and your red hair like a flame I can't resist touching? And that whimsy of yours, the poetry you bring to everything, even if you are not writing the verse with your pen, you…you write with your actions, don't you, all your feeling for Captain Jim, Leslie and her tragedy, Miss Cornelia's wisdom—your roast chicken and the little posy you keep beside our bed?" She was blushing a bit now and he saw it, paused a bit, then went on.

"I think you miss society a little, what you had at Patty's Place or your visits with Katherine. Even when you were a girl, you had your escapades with Diana and Jane and poor Ruby, and then at Queen's and Redmond…Perhaps I am the one at fault, your dull doctor husband who only ever tells you about Mrs. Drew's bursitis and Mr. Wallace's interminable podagra. I think we need to get up a little society for you here, with the winter coming and your callers less frequent. Only writing to Stella and Priscilla and Phil can't be the same as the lively chats you must have had," he offered.

She had been right to bring her problem to someone so skilled in diagnosis. For he had solved it, hadn't he? She loved her new friends and was every day more deeply in love with Gilbert, but it was not quite enough somehow. A letter from Priscilla about Kyoto and the mystifying art of the kimono was an elusive whiff of cherry blossom, but it was not the same as the conversations they'd had after dinner or sitting on each other's bed, discussing Horace or the Empress Theodosia, being interrupted by Stella who was incensed about Christopher Marlowe or Phil pointing out how only changing that one line, "an iamb for a trochee, don't you think?" could make Anne's whole sonnet work. There was no class of devilish Pringles to prepare for, no bright-eyed student eager to learn Tennyson by heart or even to make her explain just what an isoceles triangle was, again, no Professor Carlisle encouraging her to try for a novella and offering to read the first draft.

"You're right, but I can't see what to do about it," she said, thinking she might start to clear the table at least but when she moved a little to rise, he put his hand out, laid it over hers.

"Sit a while longer and see what you think of my idea. I wouldn't have you believe I was a genius to come up with it so soon, I must admit I've been mulling this over on the ride back and forth to Glen St. Mary for at least a week. What do you think about reading together in the evening? Aloud? We might pick one book only for ourselves but I think Captain Jim might very much enjoy Dickens, don't you? And Miss Cornelia, Dryden or better yet, Volpone, and… a little Ivanhoe for Leslie? We may not be able to have all our own old friends join us on these long evenings, but haven't you always told me how friendly books can be, the best opponent and sweetest confidant?"

"Oh, Gilbert Blythe! I should call you brilliant- if I hadn't been purposely advised against it by Miss Cornelia. She says men are already convinced of their better natures without any unnecessary reinforcement. But what a good idea!" Anne exclaimed.

She noticed he hadn't said what they might read together and she could not decide what she'd prefer—some elaborately complex work to engross and challenge them or something quite cheerful, full of jests and japes. Or to hear Gilbert's baritone, in a firelit night, reciting Keats to her or Donne, a degree of romance she had not thought she desired any longer, though perhaps she had given up that reverie too soon. It was a discussion for the sitting room sofa, the moonlit linens of their bed.

"I think you have managed it quite adeptly then, to give and take the compliment at once. Anne, couldn't we bring our dessert into the parlor and talk there? I think I may have even more good ideas if you are right beside me and we are sharing a piece of that pie," Gilbert said, grinning at her.

"Well, we mustn't ever tell Marilla or Rachel Lynde, they'll think I've lost my religion if they know I'm not serving dessert at the dining table, but I can't see the harm in it," Anne replied. What a pleasure marriage to Gilbert was!—there were such liberties to be taken without becoming libertine and always his warm hazel eyes regarding her with approval, admiration, affection.

"I'll bring the pie from the pantry then—you go settle yourself and if there a volume at hand you'd like to begin with, we might intersperse our bites of custard with Khayyam," Gilbert said and gave her a quick kiss on her cheek, just below her eye before he turned to the kitchen, the custard and its cutlery and Anne to the parlor, poetry and a delightfully squashy pillow tucked in the corner of the sofa, should their initial pursuits whet another appetite in pressing need of comfortable and abiding satisfaction.