and the great
pile of school buildings seemed to her fancy as horrible as a cage of
wild beasts. She felt such a loathing of the man who was legally,
although not really, her husband, that the loathing itself filled her
with shame and disgust at herself. She told herself that it was
horrible, horrible, that she could not endure it, that it was
impossible. She was in a fairly desperate mood. She had a sudden
impulse to run away and leave everybody and everything, even Evelyn
and her aunt, whom she loved so well. She felt pitiless towards
everybody except herself. She took out her pocket-book and counted
the money which it contained. There were fifteen dollars and some
loose change. The railroad station was on a road parallel to the one
on which she was walking. An express train flashed by as she stood
there. Suddenly Maria became possessed of one of those impulses which
come to everybody, but to which comparatively few yield in lifetimes.
The girl gathered up her skirts and broke into a run for the railroad
station. She knew that there was an accommodation train due soon
after the express. She reached the dusty platform, in fact, just as
the train came in. There were no other passengers from Amity except a
woman whom she did not know, dragging a stout child by the arm. The
child was enveloped in clothing to such an extent that it could
scarcely walk. It stumbled over its voluminous white coat. Nobody
could have told its sex. It cast a look of stupid discomfort at
Maria, then its rasped little face opened for a wail. "Shet up!" said
the mother, and she dragged more forcibly at the podgy little arm,
and the child broke into a lop-sided run towards the cars.

Maria had no time to get a ticket. She only had time for that one
glance at the helpless, miserable child, before she climbed up the
steep car-steps. She found an empty seat, and shrugged close to the
window. She did not think very much of what she was doing. She
thought more of the absurdly uncomfortable child, over-swathed in
clothing, and over-disciplined with mother-love, she could not have
told why. She wondered what it would be like to have an ugly,
uninteresting, viciously expostulating little one dragging at her
hand. The mother, although stout and mature-looking, was not much
older than she. It seemed to her that the being fond of such a child,
and being happy under such circumstances, would involve as much of a
vital change in herself as death itself. And ye