She
was being consumed like a lamp which needed oil. Love was for the
girl not only a need but a condition of life. Maria was realizing it.
At the same time she said to herself that possibly after school was
over and Evelyn could rest she might regain her strength. There
seemed to be no organic trouble. The local physician had been
consulted, and said that nothing whatever was the matter, yet had
gone away with a grave face after prescribing a simple tonic. The
fact was that life was flickering low, as it sometimes does, with no
ostensible reason which science could grasp. Evelyn was beyond
science. She was assailed in that citadel of spirit which overlooks
science from the heights of eternity. No physician but fate itself
could help her.

All this time, while Maria was suffering as keenly as her sister, her
suffering left no evidence. She had inherited from her mother a
tremendous strength of will, which sustained her. She said to herself
that she had her work to do, that her health must not fail. She said
that probably Wollaston did not care for her, although she could not
help thinking that she had the power to make him care, and that she
would be lacking in all that meant her true and best self should she
give way to her unhappiness and let it master her. She therefore
mastered it. In those days to Maria, who had a ready imagination, her
unhappiness seemed sometimes to assume a material shape like the
fabulous dragon. She seemed to be fighting something with tooth and
claw, a monstrous verity; but she fought, and she kept the upper
hand. Maria did not lose flesh. She ate as usual, she retained her
interest in her work, and all the time whenever a moment of solitude
came she renewed the conflict. She thought as little as possible of
Wollaston; she avoided even looking at him. He thought that he really
was an object of aversion to her. He began to question the
advisability of his retaining his position another year. He told
himself that it was hardly fair to Maria to subject her to such
annoyance, that it was much easier for him to obtain another position
than it was for her. He wanted to ask her with regard to it, but in
the days before commencement she so manifestly shrank from even
looking at him that he hardly liked to approach her even with a
question which concerned her own happiness.

Wollaston in those days used sometimes to glance at Evelyn, and
notice how very thin and delicate she looked, and an anxiety