LM Montgomery owns Anne of Green Gables. Margaret Mitchell owns some other characters. I own the characters you don't recognize from any stories you have read.

Marybeth expected to hurt. She had cared about John and his sudden absence from her life couldn't possibly go unnoticed. However, she was surprised at the intensity of her sadness.

It was useless to remind herself that she knew it would end this way. Useless to remember that when she went to his arms she had done so with the full knowledge that he was a gift she couldn't keep. She wasn't some wide-eyed young girl with rosy dreams of a joyful future. There was only one way their affair could possibly end--two people with their own separate ties, their own separate lives. He believed as strongly in his church as she believed in hers, and he wasn't a layman who could find a way to work things out or find some compromise they could both live with. There was simply no compromise possible for them--their destinies lay in different directions.

Part of her would have been content to go on as they were until the day she left, but he was right--they had grown so close over the summer that it would hurt worse if they delayed breaking it off, but right now, she didn't care. She found herself foolishly wishing that they could have had more time.

But one thing was certain. Never again would she allow herself to become involved with a minister.

Next, Marybeth tried to be philosophical. Such things were bound to happen in this crazy world. What was it that Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius said? Nothing can happen to thee, which is not incidental to thee since thou art a man. Small comfort, but it was better than nothing. Maybe there had been some reason, some purpose that he had been put in her path, at this time of her life. John had even hinted at some purpose for their knowing each other. It was probably true. Marybeth didn't believe in coincidences. She didn't believe in predestination the way he did, but she did believe that nothing happened by chance or without a purpose. Therefore, she reasoned, there was a purpose and meaning behind this sadness. And she offered it up.

"It's over," she told Anne Blythe one afternoon when they were alone, meaning Miss Cornelia was nowhere around to hear.

Anne put her arms around Marybeth, something she had never done before in the years that they were friends. "I'm sorry, Marybeth, I really, really am." Then she held Marybeth out at arms length for a moment.

Marybeth could see that Anne was trying to think of something else to say,

and smiled a little.

"Anne, I would understand completely if you admitted to also being a little relieved."

Anne nodded slowly. "Yes I am relieved. But only because it's him. Please don't think I wanted you to get hurt. It just would have been better for both of you if you'd never learned to care for each other in the first place."

It was a careful, conventional thing to say, but Marybeth could sense the sincerity behind Anne's statement. Anne seemed to feel constrained by the circumstances as much as she.

Marybeth and John had decided that they would go their separate ways and would no longer be alone together. Afterward, she really wasn't sure what she had thought she meant by it. Glen St. Mary was such a small town--she would probably see him, maybe run into him socially for they knew some of the same people. Perhaps she would run into him on the street--she really hadn't thought it out. But what happened surprised her.

He did a thorough job of avoiding her. She didn't see him at all, not even on the street. She would have died of shame to be found out--and even flatly denied doing this--but she had taken to watching out her window hoping for a glimpse of him. How he avoided her in a small town like this surpassed her understanding, but he managed to do it. Unless--maybe he'd gone out of town, maybe traded churches for a week--he told her once that ministers sometimes did that. That would have accounted for her not seeing him.

Although she was tempted, she would not ask his children, although she saw them every day. Even if it had been a casual inquiry, she wasn't sure she could keep her own demeanor detached and aloof. And by some perverse twist of fate, even Miss Cornelia never mentioned him. Marybeth was certain that Anne never told the Miss Cornelia what she knew, and she was sure it was only a coincidence, but as she sat with the two other women, she found herself longing to hear some mention of him. But she dared not ask, she didn't even dare lead the conversation close to anything involving church business.

She felt an unreasoning annoyance over his sudden disappearance. She wanted to see how he was bearing up under their separation. She wanted to reassure herself that all the tender emotion hadn't been on her side only. Not that she wanted to see him hurting, either, she hastened to tell herself, but she wanted some sign, some token that he missed her the way she was missing him. On the other hand (terrible thought!) maybe he had forgotten her already. Miss Cornelia would say men were fickle. If that were true, maybe it was better that she didn't see him.

Following on the unwelcome thought that he hadn't cared for her much at all, came a deadening numbness. It didn't matter anymore. She didn't care. His memory had no power to make her sad or, for that matter, feel anything.

She'd had this numbness before in her life, but only for the deepest and most piercing sorrows. But she would have in no case categorized this current disappointment as a piercing sorrow. Death of family members--estrangement from loved ones--loss of reputation--those were the sorrows worth grieving for. Not some romantic disappointment--this loss didn't even come close. But she was younger when those things happened. Maybe getting older did this to you--made things hurt more and not less as the years went by?

And yet, even though it would have been the height of foolishness, she would have liked him to try to seek her out...