“It does not make it right if I did.”

“I don’t think you could do anything wrong, sister,” Evelyn returned, with one of her glances of love and admiration.  Suddenly Maria wondered herself what a man would do if he were to receive one of those glances.

Evelyn continued her little chatter.  “Of course none of us girls ever wondered about Professor Lane, because he was so old,” she said.  Then she caught herself with an anxious glance at her sister.  “But he was very handsome, too,” she added, “and I don’t know why we shouldn’t have thought about him, and he wasn’t so very old.  I think Colorado will cure him.”

“I hope so,” Maria said, absently.  She had no more conception of what was in Evelyn’s mind with regard to herself and Professor Lane than she had of the thought of an inhabitant of Mars.  Ineffable distances of surmise and imagination separated the two in the same room.

Evelyn continued:  “Mr. Lee isn’t married, anyway,” she said.  “Addie said so.  His mother keeps house for him.  Wasn’t that a dreadful thing in the paper last night, sister?”

“What?” asked Maria.

“About that girl’s getting another woman’s husband to fall in love with her, and get a divorce, and then marrying him.  I don’t see how she could.  I would rather die than marry a man who had been divorced.  I would think of the other wife all the time.  Don’t you think it was dreadful, sister?”

“Why do you read such things?” asked Maria, and there was a hard ring in her voice.  It seemed to her that she was stretched on a very rack of innocence and ignorance.

“It was all there was in the paper to read,” replied Evelyn, “except advertisements.  There were pictures of the girl, and the wife, and the man, and the two little children.  Of course it was worse because there were children, but it was dreadful anyway.  I would never speak to that girl again, not if she had been my dearest friend.”

“You had better read a library book, if there is nothing better than that to read in a paper,” said Maria.

“There wasn’t, except a prize-fight, and I don’t care anything about prize-fights, and I believe there were races, too, but I don’t know anything about races.”

“I don’t see that you know very much about marriage and divorce,” Maria said, adjusting her collar.

“Are you angry with me, sister?  Don’t you want me to fasten your collar?”

“No, I can fasten it myself, thank you, dear.  No, I am not angry with you, only I do wish you wouldn’t read such stuff.  Put the paper away, and get a book instead.”

“I will if you want me to, sister,” replied Evelyn.

Chapter XXXI