wept the tears of the world, the same which a new-born child sheds.  Her sorrow was the mysterious sorrow of existence itself.  She wept because of the world, and her life in it, and her going out of it, because of its sorrow, which is sweetened with joy, and its joy embittered with sorrow.  But she did not know why she wept.  Evelyn was cast on very primitive moulds, and she had been very unrestrained, first by the indifference of her mother, then by the love of her father and sister and aunt.  It was enough for Evelyn that she wished to weep that she wept.  No other reason seemed in the least necessary to her.  In front of where she sat was a large patch of sunlight overspreading a low growth of fuzzy weeds, which shone like silver, and a bent thicket of dry asters which were still blue although withered.

All at once Evelyn became aware that this patch of sunlight was darkened, and she looked up in a sweet confusion.  Her big, dark eyes were not in the least reddened by her tears; they only glittered with them.  Her lips, slightly swollen, only made her lovelier.

Directly before her stood the new principal, and he was gazing down at her with a sort of consternation, pity, and embarrassment.  Wollaston was in reality wishing himself anywhere else.  A woman’s tears aroused in him pity and irritation.  He wished to pass on, but it seemed too impossible to do so and leave this lovely young creature in such distress without a word of inquiry.  He therefore paused, and his slightly cold, blue eyes met Evelyn’s brilliant, tearful ones with interrogation.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.  “Shall I call any one?  Are you ill?”

Evelyn felt hurt and disturbed by his look and tone.  New tears welled up in her eyes.  She shook her head with a slight pout.  Wollaston passed on.  Evelyn raised her head and gazed after him with an indescribable motion, the motion of a timid, wild thing of the woods, which pursues, but whose true instinct is to be pursued.  Suddenly she rose, and ran after him, and was by his side.

“I am ashamed you should have seen—­” she said, brokenly.  “I was crying for nothing.”

Wollaston looked down at her and smiled.  She also was smiling through her tears.  “Young ladies should not cry for nothing,” he said, with a whimsical, school-master manner.

“It seems to me that nothing is the most terrible thing in the whole world to cry for,” replied Evelyn, with unconscious wisdom, but she still smiled.  Again her eyes met the young man’s, and her innocently admiring gaze was full upon his, and that happened which was inevitable, one of the chain of sequences of life itself.  His own eyes responded ardently, and the girl’s eyes fell before the man’s.  At the same time there was no ulterior significance in the man’s look, which was merely in evidence of a passing emotion to which he was involuntarily subject.  He had not the slightest thought of any love, which his look seemed to express for this little beauty of a girl, whose name he did not even know.  But he slackened his pace, and Evelyn walked timidly beside him over the golden net-work of sunlight in the path.  Evelyn spoke first.