k 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.

"I don't see what you are cryin' for," said Gladys, in an accusing
voice. "You might have been an old maid."

"I don't believe she is found," Maria moaned, in a low voice.