The car was quite full at first, but the passengers got off at the way-stations.  When they drew near Edgham there were only a few left.  Wollaston had not paid the slightest attention to the passengers.  He could not have told what sort of a man occupied the seat with him, nor even when he got off.  He was vaguely conscious of the reeking smoke of the car, but that was all.  When the conductor came through he handed out his ticket mechanically, without looking at him.  He stared out of the window at the swift-passing, shadowy trees, at the green-and-red signal-lights, and the bright glare from the lights of the stations through which they passed.  Once they passed by a large factory on fire, surrounded by a shouting mob of men, and engines.  Even that did not arrest his attention, although it caused quite a commotion in the car.  He sat huddled up in a heap, staring out with blank eyes, all his consciousness fixed upon his own affairs.  He felt as if he had made an awful leap from boyhood to manhood in a minute.  He was full of indignation, of horror, of shame.  He was conscious of wishing that there were no girls in the world.  After they had passed the last station before reaching Edgham he looked wearily away from the window, and recognized, stupidly, Maria’s father in a seat in the forward part of the car.  Harry was sitting as dejectedly hunched upon himself as was the boy.  Wollaston recognized the fact that he could not have found little Evelyn, and realized wickedly and furiously that he did not care, that a much more dreadful complication had come into his own life.  He turned again to the window.

Maria, in the car behind the smoker, sat beside Gladys, and looked out of the window very much as Wollaston was doing.  She also was conscious of an exceeding horror and terror, and a vague shame.  It was, to Maria, as if she had fallen through the fairy cobweb of romance and struck upon the hard ground of reality with such force that her very soul was bleeding.  Wollaston, in the smoker, wished no more devoutly that there were no girls in the world, than Maria wished there were no boys.  Her emotions had been, as it were, thrust back down her own throat, and she was choked and sickened with them.  She would not look at nor speak to Gladys.  Once, when Gladys addressed a remark to her, Maria thrust out an indignant shoulder towards her.

“You needn’t act so awful mad,” whispered Gladys.  “I ain’t goin’ to tell, and I was doin’ it on your account.  My mother will give it to me when I git home.”

“What are you going to tell her?” asked Maria, with sudden interest.

“I’m goin’ to tell her I’ve been out walkin’ with Ben Jadkins.  She’s told me not to, and she’ll lick me for all she’s wuth,” said Gladys, angrily.  “But I don’t care.  It’s lucky father ’ain’t been through this train.  It’s real lucky to have your father git drunk sometimes.  I’ll git licked, but I don’t care.”

Maria, sitting there, paid no more attention.  The shock of her own plight had almost driven from her mind the thought of Evelyn, but when a woman got on the train leading a child about her age, the old pain concerning her came back.  She began to weep again quietly.