He kissed her gently. "I shall always be kind to you," he said. Then, with a half-sigh, "You will like to live here?"
"It is my home, Rast. However, other places will not seem strange after I have seen the great city. For of course I must go to New York, just the same, to learn to be a teacher, and help the children: we may be separated for years."
"Oh no; I shall be able to take care of you all before long," said Rast, grandly. "As soon as I have been through college I shall look about and decide upon something. Would you like me to be a lawyer? Or a surgeon? Then there is always the army. Or we might have a farm."
"There is only Frobisher's."
"Oh, you mean here on the island? Well, Frobisher's would do. We could repair the old house, and have a pony-cart, and drive in to town." Here the steamer sounded its first whistle. That meant that it would start in half an hour. Rast left the future and his plans in mid-air, and took Anne in his arms with real emotion. "Good-by, dear, good-by," he said. "Do not grieve, or allow yourself to be lonely. I shall see you soon in some way, even if I have to go to New York for the purpose. Remember that you are my betrothed wife now. That thought will comfort you."
"Yes," said Anne, her sincere eyes meeting his. Then she clung to him for a few moments, sobbing. "You must go away, and I must go away," she said, amid her tears: "nothing is the same any more. Father is dead, and the whole world will be between us. Nothing is the same any more. Nothing is the same."
"Distance is nothing nowadays," said the youth, soothing her; "I can reach you in almost no time, Annet."
"Yes, but nothing is the same any more; nothing ever will be the same ever again," she sobbed, oppressed for the first time in her life by the vague uncertainties of the future.
"Oh yes, it will," said her companion, decidedly. "I will come back here if you wish it so much, and you shall come back, and we will live here on this same old island all our lives. A man has but to choose his home, you know."
Anne looked somewhat comforted. Yet only part of her responded to his words; she still felt that nothing would ever be quite the same again. She could not bring back her father; she could not bring back their long happy childhood. The door was closed behind them, and they must now go out into the wide world.