Priscilla took Honors in Classics , and Phil in Mathematics . Stella obtained a good all-round showing . Then came Convocation . `` This is what I would once have called an epoch in my life , '' said Anne , as she took Roy 's violets out of their box and gazed at them thoughtfully . She meant to carry them , of course , but her eyes wandered to another box on her table . It was filled with lilies-of-the-valley , as fresh and fragrant as those which bloomed in the Green Gables yard when June came to Avonlea . Gilbert Blythe 's card lay beside it . Anne wondered why Gilbert should have sent her flowers for Convocation . She had seen very little of him during the past winter . He had come to Patty 's Place only one Friday evening since the Christmas holidays , and they rarely met elsewhere . She knew he was studying very hard , aiming at High Honors and the Cooper Prize , and he took little part in the social doings of Redmond . Anne 's own winter had been quite gay socially . She had seen a good deal of the Gardners ; she and Dorothy were very intimate ; college circles expected the announcement of her engagement to Roy any day . Anne expected it herself . Yet just before she left Patty 's Place for Convocation she flung Roy 's violets aside and put Gilbert 's lilies-of-the-valley in their place . She could not have told why she did it . Somehow , old Avonlea days and dreams and friendships seemed very close to her in this attainment of her long-cherished ambitions . She and Gilbert had once picturedout merrily the day on which they should be capped and gowned graduates in Arts . The wonderful day had come and Roy 's violets had no place in it . Only her old friend 's flowers seemed to belong to this fruition of old-blossoming hopes which he had once shared .
For years this day had beckoned and allured to her ; but when it came the one single , keen , abiding memory it left with her was not that of the breathless moment when the stately president of Redmond gave her cap and diploma and hailed her B.A. ; it was not XXXXX the flash in Gilbert 's eyes when he saw her lilies , nor the puzzled pained glance Roy gave her as he passed her on the platform .
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