“I don’t think so.”

“I can’t help hoping he did not.  And I don’t believe it is so very wicked, because I know that none of the other girls can possibly love him as much as I do.  But, Maria—­”

“Well?”

“I do love him enough not to complain if he really loved some other girl, and she was good, and would make him happy.  I would go down on my knees to her to love him.  I would, Maria, honest.”  Evelyn was almost hysterical.  Maria soothed her, and evaded as well as she was able her repeated little, piteous questions as to whether she thought Mr. Lee could ever care for her.  “I know I am pretty,” Evelyn said naively.  “I really think I must be prettier than any other girl in school.  I have heard so, and I really think so myself, but being pretty means so little when it comes to anything like this with a man like him.  He might love Addie Hemingway instead of me, so far as looks were concerned, but I don’t think Addie would make him very happy—­do you, Maria?”

“No, dear.  I am quite sure he will never think of her.  Now try and be quiet and go to sleep.”

“I cannot go to sleep,” moaned Evelyn, but it was not very long before she was drawing long, even breaths.  Her youth had asserted itself.  Then, too, she had got certain comfort from this baring of her soul before the soothing love of her sister.

As soon as Maria became sure that Evelyn was soundly asleep she gently unwound the slender, clinging arms and got out of bed, and stole noiselessly into Evelyn’s own room, which adjoined hers.  She did not get into bed, but took a silk comfortable off, and wrapped it around her, then sat down in a low chair beside the window.  It seemed to her that if she could not have a little while to think by herself that she should go mad.  The utterly inconceivable to her had happened, and the utterly inconceivable fairly dazzles the brain when it comes to pass.  Maria felt as if she were outside all hitherto known tracks of life, almost as if she were in the fourth dimension.  The possibility that her own sister might fall in love with the man whom she had married had never entered her mind before.  She had checked Evelyn’s wonder concerning him, but she had thought no more of it than of the usual foolish exuberance of a young girl.  Now she believed that her sister really loved Wollaston.  She recalled the fears which she had had with regard to her strenuous nature.  She did not believe it to be a passing fancy of an ordinary young girl.  She recalled word for word what Evelyn had said, and she believed.  Maria sat awhile gazing out of the window at the starlit sky in a sort of blank of realization, of adjustment.  She could not at first formulate any plan of action.  She could only, as it were, state the problem.  She gazed up at the northern constellations, at the mysterious polar star, and it seemed to steady her mind and give it power to deal with her petty problem of life by its far-away and everlasting guiding light.  The window was partly open, and the same pungent odor of death and life in one which had endured all day came in her nostrils.  She seemed to sense heaven and earth and herself as an atom, but an atom racked with infinite pain between the two.