“Thought what?”
“I thought maybe he would—”
“Who would?”
“I thought maybe Mr. Lee would give me something,” sobbed Evelyn.
Maria lay still.
Evelyn nestled closer. “Oh,” she whispered, “I love him so! I can't help it. I can't. I love him so, sister!”
Chapter XXXIII
There was a second's hush after Evelyn had said that. It seemed to Maria that her heart stood still. A sort of incredulity, as of the monstrous and the super-human seized her. She felt as one who had survived a railroad accident might feel looking down upon his own dismembered body in which life still quivered. She could not seem to actually sense what Evelyn had said, although the words still rang in her ears. Presently, Evelyn spoke again in her smothered, weeping voice. “Do you think I am so very dreadful, so—immodest, to care so much about a man who has never said he cared about me?”
“He has never said anything?” asked Maria, and her voice sounded strange in her own ears.
“No, never one word that I could make anything of, but he has looked at me, he has, honest, sister.” Evelyn burst into fresh sobs.