Anne had finished crying a couple of hours ago and now just sat in the corner of her little house, hugging her knees, trying to keep warm. It was bitterly cold outside, and she regretted not bringing her things with her when she left.

Should she go back and get her things? School was likely over by now, but what if Mr. Philips was still there? She wasn't sure how long the teacher stayed after he let school out. And what if Billy was still hanging around? What if he was in the woods this very minute?

No, she better stay where she was. It seemed too risky to walk alone in the woods, and even riskier to head back to the schoolhouse.

After all, she was truly alone now.

She felt terrible about hitting Gilbert, the one person she could trust, the one person she felt safe with.

She regretted not being able to control her emotions in school.

How awful for him, she thought, to have done so much to help someone, only to get smacked in the face with a slate in return.

And, she thought with despair, I have no one, now. There's no one to protect me. I'm on my own.

Anne felt she could not go back to school, but what would Marilla say about her coming home without her belongings? If it was just a book or two, she could pretend to have left them at school. Marilla would sigh and call her careless, but that wouldn't hurt her. But how could she pretend to have forgotten her books and her lunch basket and her hat and her shawl? There was simply no way she could have forgotten her shawl, especially, with it being so cold outside.

And, goodness, what would Marilla say when she found out she'd have to buy Anne a new slate?

Anne hugged her knees to her chest and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to imagine she was somewhere else. Anywhere else.

"Anne?" came a soft voice.

Anne's eyes snapped open.

Gilbert was leaning into the doorway of her makeshift hideaway.

Anne stared at him.

She had not thought she would see him again.

Her first thought, unfortunately, was that he had come to hurt her. He had been so kind, so gentle, before- but now, after what she'd done…well, Billy had hurt her in revenge. Perhaps Gilbert would too. Perhaps that's what all men did when they were angry. Mr. Hammond seemed angry an awful lot of the time, and now Anne knew what poor Mrs. Hammond had to go through.

She stared at him, not speaking.

Gilbert looked at her with an odd expression. He stood up and glanced around, thinking perhaps Billy had followed him; that Anne had spotted Billy coming up behind him.

But he didn't see anyone. He looked back at Anne. Billy wasn't behind him. But Anne was still looking at him with fear in her eyes.

"Anne, what's wrong?" Gilbert asked, concerned, stepping inside the little house and sitting down next to her. "Why do you look so scared? Did something happen?"

Anne just stared at him. "What- what are you doing here?"

Gilbert searched her face, looking confused. "I…came to bring you your things. And to see how you were."

She now noticed that Gilbert was indeed holding her belongings. "Oh," she said. She took a shaky breath.

"Look," he said, showing her her hat and her bookstrap. "I brought all your things, your books, and…and there's math homework, and if it's something you haven't learned yet then I'm gonna help you with it, okay?"

Anne didn't answer. She looked around at her belongings as if she were just trying to register what had just happened.

Gilbert just stared at her for a long moment.

Then it finally hit him. He made sense of her reaction. "Anne, you didn't think I was l was looking to hurt you, did you?"

"I thought-" Anne wiped her eyes, "I thought that you- I thought you were angry, and…"

"Anne…oh, no…no, I would never-" Gilbert moved so he was sitting in front of her. "Anne, I could never do anything like that. I could never hurt you."

"I didn't want to think badly of you, honestly- you've been so nice to me…" Anne choked on her tears. "But…but…everything seems so mixed up now! I've been used to people not always being very nice, but now it's different somehow, it's like…it's like...if someone gets angry with me I just don't know what to expect, especially because…I mean, you're a boy, after all, and I know you aren't like Billy, but…but you're a boy, and…and..."

Gilbert reached out and held her shaking arms. "It's okay. It's okay," he said, looking at her, concern showing in his eyes. "I understand. I'm not angry with you. I'm not."

He just stared at her for a moment, watching her crying- wanting to fix it, but not knowing how to.

He finally remembered she'd been sitting there for a couple hours in the cold without her shawl. He leaned over and pulled her shawl around her. "Anne, you're freezing, here, let's get you warmed up…it'll be okay…"

He quickly took off his own coat and pulled that around her too.

Anne was crying but looked up at him when he pulled his own coat around her. "Don't," she said. "You'll be cold…"

"I'll be okay," Gilbert said under his breath, pulling the coat more tightly around her, and then taking her cold hands into his own to try to warm them.

"Why are you being so nice to me?" Anne asked, still crying even as Gilbert held her cold hands.

"Why shouldn't I be?" Gilbert asked.

Anne stopped crying and looked at him, bewildered. "I hit you in the face with my slate."

Gilbert smiled. "Yeah, and Anne, don't keep your slate tucked away in your bookstrap anymore. If you carry that slate around with you I don't think you'll have to worry about protecting yourself. You pack quite the punch with that thing."

Anne blushed. "I hope you're not going to end up awfully bruised."

Gilbert shrugged. "I doubt it. I think it would have started already, if I was going to. I'll be okay."

"Well, I'm sorry. Really I am," Anne told him. "And I'll sure be sorry when I have to tell Marilla. She won't be happy that I'll need a new slate," Anne sighed.

"Well…I hate to tell you this, but you're going to need new chalk for your slate, too. I…dropped your things. By accident." Gilbert said, not letting her in on the fact that he had had an encounter with Billy and had dropped her things for the sole purpose of giving Billy a split lip. "It was when I was walking here. I didn't notice the chalk fell out until I had walked on a ways. I went back to look for it, but I couldn't find it. I'm sorry," he said. "You can use mine, though."

"Thank you," Anne said, pulling her hands away from his, now, so that she could push her hair behind her ears. Then she put her hands inside her shawl. "I wish it were Friday. At least then I'd have the weekend. I can't imagine how I can walk into school tomorrow morning. Not after what I did today." She shook her head. "Mr. Philips must have been furious."

Gilbert took a breath. "Well, I won't lie to you. He was angry. I'd expect a note home from him, or having to write lines or stay in at recess or something. But he doesn't strike girls so you're at least safe from that."

"I don't think teachers ought to hit their students," Anne said, having remembered a time when she was young- one of the few times she remembered being in school- and had a teacher's ruler smacked across her hand because the whole class was reading a story aloud and Anne wasn't on the right page. She had tried to explain to the teacher that she wasn't on the right page because she had been so enthralled with the story that she couldn't help reading ahead and had gotten several pages ahead of the class. The teacher had told her, "I told everyone to turn to page 41, so you should have been on page 41 as you were told. And if I have to tell you one more time not to talk back to me, you'll be struck again. Hold your tongue and stay on the same page as the others!" …And it was page 41; Anne remembered this incident so vividly that she would never forget what exact page they had been on.

Gilbert brought her out of her memory by saying, "Well, maybe someday you'll be a teacher, and you can do things differently. Have you ever thought about becoming a teacher?" Gilbert asked.

Anne cocked her head, thinking. "I would like that," she said slowly. "I think I really would. That, or an author. I'd give anything to have nothing to do but think up stories every day."

"I'm glad you can keep the future in mind." Gilbert said. "You're going through some stuff right now, and I know it can get…it can get bad. I think it's good if you always try to have something to look forward to. Something to keep you going if you start to feel like things are just getting too hard."

"I don't know what I'd do without an imagination," Anne commented softly. "I always try to think of things as being better than they are. Or that someday something wonderful will happen. I don't know what people do if they can't. It's all just pictures in my mind: cold, bare branches come alive with cherry blossoms even in the dark of winter…the sun on a pane of glass is a doorway to a fairy land…I squint my eyes and spiderwebs become Chantilly lace."

Gilbert gazed at her, smiling. She never ceased to amaze him.

"You open your mouth and magic comes out," he said before he even realized he'd said it out loud.

Anne looked at him, startled. "That sounds just like a line of poetry," she said.

"Well, I'm not much for poetry, but I know a beautiful thing when I see it." He looked down, then, as if he'd said too much.