remembered the look which she had seen on his face when Evelyn began her essay that day. "If he does not love her now it is because he is bound to me," she thought. "He would most certainly love her if it were not for me." Again it seemed to Maria distinctly better that she should die, better--that is, for Evelyn and the man. But she had the thought, with no morbid desire for suicide or any bitterness. It simply seemed to her as if her elimination would produce that desirable unknown quantity of happiness. Elimination and not suicide seemed to her the only course for her to pursue. She sat far into the night thinking it over. She had great imagination and great daring. Things were possible to her which would not have been possible to many--that is, she considered things as possibilities which would have seemed to many simply vagaries. She thought of them seriously, with a belief in their fulfilment. It was almost morning, the birds had just begun to sing in scattering flute-like notes, when she crept into bed. She hardly slept at all. She heard the gathering chorus of the birds, in a half doze, until seven o'clock. Then she got up and dressed herself. She peeped cautiously into Evelyn's room. The girl was sleeping, her long, dark lashes curled upon her wan cheeks. She looked ghastly, yet still lovely. Maria looked at her, and her mouth compressed. Then she turned away. She crept noiselessly down the stairs and into the kitchen where Aunt Maria was preparing breakfast. The stove smoked a little and the air was blue. "How is she?" asked Aunt Maria, in a hushed voice. "She is fast asleep." "Better let her sleep just as long as she will," said Aunt Maria. "These exhibitions are pure tomfoolery. She is just tuckered out." "Yes, I think she is," said Maria. Aunt Maria looked keenly at her, and her face paled and lengthened. "Maria Edgham, what on earth is the matter with _you?_" she said. "You look as bad as she does. Between both of you I am at my wit's end." "Nothing ails me," said Maria. "Nothing ails you? Look at yourself in the glass there." Maria stole a look at herself in a glass which hung over the kitchen-table, and she hardly knew her own face, it had gathered such a strange fixedness of secret purpose. That had altered it more than her pallor. Maria tried to smile and say again that nothing ailed her, but she could not. Suddenly a tremendous pity for her aunt came over her. She had not thought so much about that. But now she looked at things from her aunt's point of view, and she saw the pain to which the poor old woman must be put. She saw no way of avoiding the giving her the pain, but she suffered it herself. She went up to Aunt Maria and kissed her. Aunt Maria started back, and rubbed her face violently. "What did you do that for?" said she, in a frightened voice. Then she noticed Maria's dress, which was one which she seldom wore unless she was going out. "What have you got on your brown suit for this morning?" said she.