"I cannot go to sleep," moaned Evelyn, but it was not very long before she was drawing long, even breaths. Her youth had a.s.serted itself. Then, too, she had got certain comfort from this baring of her soul before the soothing love of her sister.

As soon as Maria became sure that Evelyn was soundly asleep she gently unwound the slender, clinging arms and got out of bed, and stole noiselessly into Evelyn's own room, which adjoined hers. She did not get into bed, but took a silk comfortable off, and wrapped it around her, then sat down in a low chair beside the window. It seemed to her that if she could not have a little while to think by herself that she should go mad. The utterly inconceivable to her had happened, and the utterly inconceivable fairly dazzles the brain when it comes to pa.s.s. Maria felt as if she were outside all hitherto known tracks of life, almost as if she were in the fourth dimension.

The possibility that her own sister might fall in love with the man whom she had married had never entered her mind before. She had checked Evelyn's wonder concerning him, but she had thought no more of it than of the usual foolish exuberance of a young girl. Now she believed that her sister really loved Wollaston. She recalled the fears which she had had with regard to her strenuous nature. She did not believe it to be a pa.s.sing fancy of an ordinary young girl. She recalled word for word what Evelyn had said, and she believed. Maria sat awhile gazing out of the window at the starlit sky in a sort of blank of realization, of adjustment. She could not at first formulate any plan of action. She could only, as it were, state the problem.

She gazed up at the northern constellations, at the mysterious polar star, and it seemed to steady her mind and give it power to deal with her petty problem of life by its far-away and everlasting guiding light. The window was partly open, and the same pungent odor of death and life in one which had endured all day came in her nostrils. She seemed to sense heaven and earth and herself as an atom, but an atom racked with infinite pain between the two.

"There is the great polar star," she said to herself, "there are all the suns and stars, here is the earth, and here am I, Maria Edgham, who am on the earth, but must some day give up my mortal life and become a part of it, and part of the material universe and perhaps also of the spiritual. I am as nothing, and yet this pain in my heart, this love in my heart, makes me shine with my own fire as much as the star. I could not be unless the earth existed, but it is of such as myself that the earth is made up, and without such as myself it could not shine in its place in the heavens."

Maria began to attach a certain importance to her individual existence even while she realized the pettiness of it, comparatively speaking. She was an infinitesimal part, but the whole could not be without that part. Suddenly the religious instruction which she had drank in with her mother's milk took possession of her, but she had a breadth of outlook which would have terrified her mother. Maria said to herself that she believed in G.o.d, but that His need of her was as much as her need of Him. She said to herself that without her tiny faith in Him, her tiny speck of love for Him, He would lack something of Himself. Then all at once, in a perfect flood of rapture, something which she had never before known came into her heart: the consciousness of the love of G.o.d for herself, of the need of G.o.d for herself, poor little Maria Edgham, whose ways of life had been so untoward and so absurd that she almost seemed to herself something to be laughed at rather than pitied, much less loved. But all at once the knowledge of the love of G.o.d was over her. She gazed up again at the great polar star overlooking with its eternal light the mysteries of the north, and for the first time in her whole life the primitive instinct of worship a.s.serted itself within her. Maria rose, and fell on her knees, and continued to gaze up at the star which seemed to her like an eye of G.o.d Himself, and love seemed to pervade her whole being. She thought now almost lightly of Wollaston Lee. What was any earthly love to love like this, which took hold of the beginning and end of things, of the eternal? A resolution which this sense of love seemed to inspire came over her. It was a resolution almost grotesque, but it was sacred because her heart of hearts was in it, and she made it because of this love of G.o.d for her and her new sense of worship for something beyond the earth and all earthly affections which had taken possession of her. She rose, undressed herself, and went to bed. She did not say any prayer as usual. She seemed an incarnate prayer which made formulas unnecessary. Why was it essential to say anything when she was? At last she fell asleep, and did not wake until the dawn light was in the room. She did not wake as usual to a reunion with herself, but to a reunion with another self. She did not feel altogether happy. The resolution of the night before remained, but the ecstasy had vanished. She was not yet an angel, only a poor, human girl with the longings of her kind, which would not be entirely stifled as long as her human heart beat. But she did what she had planned. Maria had an unusually high forehead.

It might have given evidence of intellect, of goodness, but it was not beautiful. She had always fluffed her blond hair over it, concealing it with pretty waves. This morning she brushed all her hair as tightly back as possible, and made a hard twist at an ugly angle at the back of her head. By doing this she did not actually destroy her beauty, for her regular features and delicate tints remained, but n.o.body looking at her would have called her even pretty. Her delicate features became p.r.o.nounced and hardened, her nose seemed sharpened and elongated, her lips thinner. This display of her forehead hardened and made bold all her face and made her look years older than she was. Maria looked at herself in the gla.s.s with a sort of horror. She had always been fond of herself in the gla.s.s. She had loved that double of herself which had come and gone at her bidding, but now it was different. She was actually afraid of the stern, thin visage which confronted her, which was herself, yet not herself. When she was fully dressed it was worse still. She put on a gray gown which had never been becoming. It was not properly fitted.

It was short-waisted, and gave her figure a short, chunky appearance.

This chunky aspect, with her sharp face and strained back hair, made her seem fairly hideous to herself. But she remained firm. Her firmness, in reality, was one cause of the tightening and thinning of her lips. She hesitated when about to go down-stairs. She had not heard Evelyn go down. She wondered whether she had better wait until she went, or go into her room. She finally decided upon the latter course. Evelyn was standing in front of her dresser brushing her hair. When Maria entered she threw with a quick motion the whole curly, fluffy ma.s.s over her face, which glowed through it with an intensity of shame. Evelyn, when she awoke that morning, felt as if she had revealed some nakedness of her very soul. The girl was fairly ill. She could not believe that she had said what she remembered herself to have said.

"Good-morning, dear," said Maria.

Evelyn did not notice her changed appearance at all. She continued to brush away at the mist of hair over her face. "Oh, sister!" she murmured.

"Never mind, precious, we won't say anything more about it," said Maria, and her voice had maternal inflections.

"I ought not," stammered Evelyn, but Maria interrupted her.

"I have forgotten all about it, dear," she said. "Now you had better hurry or you will be late."

"When I woke up this morning and remembered, I felt as if I should die," Evelyn said, in a choked voice.

"Nonsense," said Maria. "You won't die, and it will all come out right. Don't worry anything about it or think anything more about it.

Why don't you wear your red dress to school to-day? It is pleasant."

"Well, perhaps I had better," Evelyn said. She threw back her hair then, but still she did not look at Maria.

She arranged her hair and removed her little dressing-sack before she looked at Maria, who had seated herself in a rocking-chair beside the window. Aunt Maria always insisted upon getting breakfast without any a.s.sistance. The odor of coffee and baking m.u.f.fins stole into the room. Evelyn got her red dress from the closet and put it on, still avoiding Maria's eyes. But at last she turned towards her.

"I am all ready to go down," she said, in a weak little voice; then she gave a great start, and stared at Maria.

Maria bore the stare calmly, and rose.

"All right, dear," she replied.

But Evelyn continued standing before her, staring incredulously. It was almost as if she doubted Maria's ident.i.ty.

"Why, Maria Edgham!" she said, finally. "What is the matter?"

"What do you mean, dear?"

"What have you done to yourself to make you look so queer? Oh, I see what it is! It's your hair. Maria, dear, what have you strained it off your forehead in that way for? It makes you look--why--"

Then Maria lied. "My hair has been growing farther and farther off my forehead lately," said she, "and I thought possibly the reason was because I covered it. I thought if I brushed my hair back it would be better for it. Then, too, my head has ached some, and it seemed to me the pain in my forehead would be better if I kept it cooler."

"But, Maria," said Evelyn, "you don't look so pretty. You don't, dear, honest. I hate to say so, but you don't."

"Well I am afraid the pretty part of it will have to go," said Maria, going towards the door.

"Oh, Maria, please pull your hair over your forehead just a little."

"No, dear, I have it all fixed for the day, and it must stay as it is."

Evelyn followed Maria down-stairs. She had a puzzled expression.

Maria's hair was diverting her from her own troubles. She could not understand why any girl should deliberately make herself homely. She felt worried. It even occurred to wonder if anything could be the matter with Maria's mind.

When the two girls went into the little dining-room, where breakfast was ready for them, Aunt Maria began to say something about the weather, then she cut herself short when she saw Maria.

"Maria Edgham," said she, "what on earth--"

Maria took her place at the table. "Those gems look delicious," she observed. But Aunt Maria was not to be diverted.

"I don't want to hear anything about gems," said she. "They are good enough, I guess. I always could make gems, but what I want to know is if you have gone clean daft."

"I don't think so," replied Maria, laughing.

But Aunt Maria continued to stare at her with an expression of almost horror.

"What under the sun have you got your hair done up that way for?"

said she.

Maria repeated what she had told Evelyn.

"Stuff!" said Aunt Maria. "It will make the hair grow farther back straining it off your forehead that way, I can tell you that. You don't use common-sense, and as for your headache, I guess the hair didn't make it ache. It's the first I've heard of it. You look like a fright, I can tell you that."

"Well, I can't help it," said Maria. "I shall have to behave well to make up."

"Maria Edgham, you don't mean to say you are going to school looking as you do now!"

Maria laughed, and b.u.t.tered a gem.

"You look old enough to be your own grandmother. You have spoiled your looks."

"Looks don't amount to much," said Maria.

"Maria Edgham, are you crazy?"

"I hope not."

"I told sister she didn't look so pretty," said Evelyn.

"Look so pretty? She looks like a homely old maid. Your nose looks a yard long and your chin looks peaked and your mouth looks as if you were as ugly as sin. Your forehead is too high; it always was, and you ought to thank the Lord that he gave you pretty hair, and enough of it to cover up your forehead, and now you've gone and strained it back just as tight as you can and made a knot like a tough doughnut at the back of your head. You look like a crazy thing, I can tell you that."

Maria said nothing. She ate her breakfast, while Aunt Maria and Evelyn could not eat much and were all the time furtively watching her.

Aunt Maria took Evelyn aside before the sisters left for school, and asked her in a whisper if she thought anything was wrong with Maria, if she had noticed anything, but Evelyn said she had not. But she and Aunt Maria looked at each other with eyes of frightened surmise.