Just loved everything about that chapter.

“Yes, I know, we ‘ve been expecting it. I hope you ‘ll be very happy, Tom;” and Polly shook his hands with a smile that was more pathetic than a flood of tears.

“What!” cried Tom, looking as if he thought she had lost her mind.

“Ned told us all about her; he thought it would be so, and when you spoke of another engagement, we knew you meant your own.”

“But I didn’t! Ned’s the man; he told me to tell you. It ‘s just settled.”

“Is it Maria?” cried Polly, holding on to a chair as if to be prepared for anything.

“Of course. Who else should it be?”

“He did n’t say you talked about her most and so we thought” stammered Polly, falling into a sudden flutter.

“That I was in love? Well, I am, but not with her.”

“Oh!” and Polly caught her breath as if a dash of cold water had fallen on her, for the more in earnest Tom grew, the blunter he became.

“Do you want to know the name of the girl I ‘ve loved for more than a year? Well, it ‘s Polly!” As he spoke, Tom stretched out his arms to her, with the sort of mute eloquence that cannot be resisted, and Polly went straight into them, without a word.

LM Montgomery – Anne of the Island
Anne & Gilbert

“Have you any unfulfilled dreams, Anne?” asked Gilbert.

Something in his tone—something she had not heard since that miserable evening in the orchard at Patty’s Place—made Anne’s heart beat wildly. But she made answer lightly.

“Of course. Everybody has. It wouldn’t do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about. What a delicious aroma that low-descending sun is extracting from the asters and ferns. I wish we could see perfumes as well as smell them. I’m sure they would be very beautiful.”

Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked.

“I have a dream,” he said slowly. “I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of friends—and YOU!”

Anne wanted to speak but she could find no words. Happiness was breaking over her like a wave. It almost frightened her.

“I asked you a question over two years ago, Anne. If I ask it again today will you give me a different answer?”

Still Anne could not speak. But she lifted her eyes, shining with all the love-rapture of countless generations, and looked into his for a moment. He wanted no other answer.

One of the most romantic books I read as an adolescent was a book of fairy tales, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard by Eleanor Farjeon. I can’t find a moment that works out of context, but it’s just beautiful. “The letter I threw with the lady-peel was a G. There are apples all-round your silver ring because it was once my ring. I do, you dear, I do, I do.”

Thinking about them is what got me thinking about all the other moments.