`` I wanted to see you alone , Mrs. Blythe . There is something I must tell somebody , or I think it will drive me mad . I 've been trying for a week to look it in the face -- and I ca n't . I know I can trust you -- and , besides , you will understand . A woman with eyes like yours always understands . You are one of the folks people instinctively tell things to . Mrs. Blythe , I love Leslie . LOVE her ! That seems too weak a word ! '' His voice suddenly broke with the suppressed passion of his utterance . He turned his head away and hid his face on his arm . His whole form shook . Anne sat looking at him , pale and aghast . She had never thought of this ! And yet -- how was it she had never thought of it ? It now seemed a natural and inevitable thing . She wondered at her own blindness . But -- but -- things like this did not happen in Four Winds . Elsewhere in the world human passions might set at defiance human conventions and laws -- but not HERE , surely . Leslie had kept summer boarders off and on for ten years , and nothing like this had happened .
But perhaps they had not been like Owen Ford ; and the vivid , LIVING Leslie XXXXX this summer was not the cold , sullen girl of other years .
Anne Blythe at besides in like of on to with