l--he does--care a good deal about me. I know now. I--I met him
out in the grove after the exercises were over, and--there was nobody
there, and he--he caught hold of my arms, and, Maria, he looked at
me, but--" Evelyn burst into a weak little wail.

"What is it, dear?"

"Oh, I don't know what it is, but for some reason he thinks he can't
tell me. He did not say so, but he made me know, and--and oh, Maria,
he is going away! He is not coming back to Westbridge at all. He is
going to get another place!"

"Nonsense!"

"Yes, it is so. He said so. Oh, Maria! you will think I am dreadful,
and I do love you and Aunt Maria and Uncle Henry and Aunt Eunice, but
I can't help minding his going away where I can never see him, more
than anything else in the world. I can't help loving him most. I do
feel so very badly, sister, that I think I shall die."

"Nonsense, darling."

"Yes, I shall. And I am not ashamed now. I was ashamed because I
thought so much about a man who did not care anything about me, but
now I am not ashamed. I am just killed. A person is not to blame for
being killed. I am not ashamed. I am killed. He is going away, and I
shall never see him again. The sight of him was something; I shall
not even have that. You don't know, sister. I don't love him for my
own self, but for himself. Just the knowing he is near is something,
and I shall not even have that." Evelyn was too weak to cry
tumultuously, but she made little, futile moans, and clung to Maria's
hand. Maria tried to soothe her, and finally the child, worn out,
seemed to be either asleep or in the coma of exhaustion.

Then Maria went into her own room. She undressed, and sat down beside
the window with a wrapper over her night-gown. Now she had to solve
her problem. She began as she might have done with a problem in
higher algebra, this problem of the human heart and its emotions. She
said to herself that there were three people. Evelyn, Wollaston and
herself, three known quantities, and an unknown quantity of
happiness, and perhaps life itself, which must be evolved from them.
She eliminated herself and her own happiness not with any particular
realization of self-sacrifice. She came of a race of women to whom
self-sacrifice was more natural than self-gratification. She was
unhappy, but there was no struggle for happiness to render the
unhappiness keener. She thought first of Evelyn. She loved Wollaston.
Maria reasoned, of course, that she was very you