Maria thanked her and took the tea, which was excellent, and refreshed her.  The maid returned to her seat, facing her mistress.  They had finished their luncheon.  She leaned back in her chair with a blank expression of face.  The dwarf looked out of the window, and that same half-pleasant, half-sardonic smile remained upon her face.  It was as if she regarded all nature with amused acquiescence and sarcasm, at its inability to harm her, although it had made the endeavor.

Maria glanced at her very rich black attire, and a great pearl cross which gleamed at her throat, and she wondered a little about her.  Then she turned again to the flying landscape, and again that sense of unnatural peace came over her.  She did not think of Evelyn and Wollaston, or her aunts and uncle, whom she was leaving, except with the merest glance of thought.  It was as if she were already in another world.

The train sped on, and the girls continued their chatter, and their high-shrieking trebles arose triumphant above all the clatter.  It was American girlhood rampant on the shield of their native land.  Still there was something about the foolish young faces and the inane chatter and laughter which was sweet and even appealing.  They became attractive from their audaciousness and their ignorance that they were troublesome.  Their confidence in the admiration of all who saw and heard almost compelled it.  Their postures, their crossing their feet with lavish displays of lingerie and dainty feet and hose, was possibly the very boldness of innocence, although Maria now and then glanced at them and thought of Evelyn, and was thankful that she was not like them.

The little dwarf also glanced now and then at them with her pleasant and sardonic smile and with an unruffled patience.  She seemed either to look up from the depths of, or down from the heights of, her deformity upon them, and to hardly sense them at all.  None of the men returned until a large city was reached, where some of them were to get off.  Then they lounged into the car, were brushed, took their satchels, and when the train reached the station swung out, with the unfailing trebles still in their ears.

Before the train reached New York, all the many appurtenances had vanished from the car.  The chattering girls also had alighted at a station, with a renewed din like a flock of birds, and there were then left in the rear car only Maria, the dwarf woman, and her maid.

It was not until the train was lighted, and she could no longer see anything from the window except signal-lights and lighted windows of towns through which they whirled, that Maria’s unnatural mood disappeared.  Suddenly she glanced around the lighted car, and terror seized her.  She was no longer a very young girl; she had much strength of character, but she was unused to the world.  For the first time she seemed to feel the cold waters of it touch her very heart.  She thought of the great and terrible city into which