Maria rose mechanically and followed the conductor through the car.  When she had descended the steps Wollaston, who had gotten off just in advance, stood aside and waited.  He felt uneasy without just knowing why.  It seemed to him that there was something strange about the girl’s bearing.  He thought so the more when she stood motionless on the platform and remained there a moment or more after the train had moved out; then she went towards a bench outside the station and sat down.  Wollaston made up his mind that there was something strange, and that he must speak to her.

He approached her, and he could hear his heart beat.  He stood in front of her, and raised his hat.  Maria did not look up.  Her eyes seemed fixed on a fringe of wood across the track in which some katydids were calling, late as it was.  That wood, with its persistent voices of unseen things, served to turn her thought from herself, just as the cry of the child had done.

“Miss Edgham,” said Wollaston, in a strained voice.  It suddenly occurred to him that that was not the girl’s name at all, that she was in reality Mrs. Lee, not Miss Edgham.

Maria did not seem to see him until he had repeated her name again.  Then she gave a sudden start and looked up.  An electric light on the platform made his face quite plain.  She knew him at once.  She did not make a sound, but rose with a sudden stealthy motion like that of a wild, hunted thing who leaves its covert for farther flight.  But Wollaston laid his hand on her shoulder and forced her gently back to her seat.  There was no one besides themselves on the platform.  They were quite alone.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said.  But Maria, looking up at him, fairly chattered with terror.  Her lips were open, she made inarticulate noises like a frightened little monkey.  Her eyes dilated.  This seemed to her incredibly monstrous, that in fleeing she should have come to that from which she fled.  All at once the species of mental coma in which she had been cleared away, and she saw herself and the horrible situation in which her flight had placed her.  The man looked down at her with the utmost kindness, concern, and pity.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said again; but Maria continued to look at him with that cowering, hunted look.

“Where are you going?” asked Wollaston, and suddenly his voice became masterful.  He realized that there was something strange, undoubtedly, about all this.

“I don’t know,” Maria said, dully.

“You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t.”

Maria raised her head and looked down the track.  “I am going on the train,” said she, with another wild impulse.

“What train?”

“The next train.”

“The next train to where?”

“The next train to Springfield,” said Maria, mentioning the first city which came into her mind.

“What are you going to Springfield for so late?  Have you friends there?”