<h2><SPAN name="X" id="X"></SPAN>X</h2>
<p>Though the ensuing interview with Cornelia and her mother began quite
as coolly as the interview with the Doctor, it did not happen to end
even in hysterical laughter.</p>
<p>It was just two days after the Doctor's hurried exit that Stanton
received a formal, starchy little note from Cornelia's mother
notifying him of their return.</p>
<p>Except for an experimental, somewhat wobbly-kneed journey or two to
the edge of the Public Garden he had made no attempts as yet to resume
any outdoor life, yet for sundry personal reasons of his own he did
not feel over-anxious to postpone the necessary meeting. In the
immediate emergency at hand strong courage was infinitely more of an
asset than<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></SPAN></span> strong knees. Filling his suitcase at once with all the
explanatory evidence that he could carry, he proceeded on cab-wheels
to Cornelia's grimly dignified residence. The street lamps were just
beginning to be lighted when he arrived.</p>
<p>As the butler ushered him gravely into the beautiful drawing room he
realized with a horrid sinking of the heart that Cornelia and her
mother were already sitting there waiting for him with a dreadful
tight lipped expression on their faces which seemed to suggest that
though he was already fifteen minutes ahead of his appointment they
had been waiting for him there since early dawn.</p>
<p>The drawing room itself was deliciously familiar to him;
crimson-curtained, green carpeted, shining with heavy gilt picture
frames and prismatic chandeliers. Often with posies and candies and
theater-tickets he had strutted across that erst<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></SPAN></span>while magic threshold
and fairly lolled in the big deep-upholstered chairs while waiting for
the silk-rustling advent of the ladies. But now, with his suitcase
clutched in his hand, no Armenian peddler of laces and ointments could
have felt more grotesquely out of his element.</p>
<p>Indolently Cornelia's mother lifted her lorgnette and gazed at him
skeptically from the spot just behind his left ear where the barber
had clipped him too short, to the edge of his right heel that the
bootblack had neglected to polish. Apparently she did not even see the
suitcase but,</p>
<p>"Oh, are you leaving town?" she asked icily.</p>
<p>Only by the utmost tact on his part did he finally succeed in
establishing tête-à-tête relations with Cornelia herself; and even
then if the house had been a tower ten stories high, Cornelia's
mother, rus<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></SPAN></span>tling up the stairs, could not have swished her skirts any
more definitely like a hissing snake.</p>
<p>In absolute dumbness Stanton and Cornelia sat listening until the
horrid sound died away. Then, and then only, did Cornelia cross the
room to Stanton's side and proffer him her hand. The hand was very
cold, and the manner of offering it was very cold, but Stanton was
quite man enough to realize that this special temperature was purely a
matter of physical nervousness rather than of mental intention.</p>
<p>Slipping naturally into the most conventional groove either of word or
deed, Cornelia eyed the suitcase inquisitively.</p>
<p>"What are you doing?" she asked thoughtlessly. "Returning my
presents?"</p>
<p>"You never gave me any presents!" said Stanton cheerfully.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Why, didn't I?" murmured Cornelia slowly. Around her strained mouth a
smile began to flicker faintly. "Is that why you broke it off?" she
asked flippantly.</p>
<p>"Yes, partly," laughed Stanton.</p>
<p>Then Cornelia laughed a little bit, too.</p>
<p>After this Stanton lost no possible time in getting down to facts.</p>
<p>Stooping over from his chair exactly after the manner of peddlers whom
he had seen in other people's houses, he unbuckled the straps of his
suitcase, and turned the cover backward on the floor.</p>
<p>Cornelia followed every movement of his hand with vaguely perplexed
blue eyes.</p>
<p>"Surely," said Stanton, "this is the weirdest combination of
circumstances that ever happened to a man and a girl—or rather, I
should say, to a man and two girls." Quite accustomed as he now was to
the general effect on himself of the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></SPAN></span> whole unique adventure with the
Serial-Letter Co. his heart could not help giving a little extra jump
on this, the verge of the astonishing revelation that he was about to
make to Cornelia. "Here," he stammered, a tiny bit out of breath,
"here is the small, thin, tissue-paper circular that you sent me from
the Serial-Letter Co. with your advice to subscribe, and there—"
pointing earnestly to the teeming suitcase,—"there are the minor
results of—having taken your advice."</p>
<p>In Cornelia's face the well-groomed expression showed sudden signs of
immediate disorganization.</p>
<p>Snatching the circular out of his hand she read it hurriedly, once,
twice, three times. Then kneeling cautiously down on the floor with
all the dignity that characterized every movement of her body, she
began to poke here and there into the contents of the suitcase.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="center"><SPAN name="imag_12" id="imag_12"></SPAN><ANTIMG src="images/image_12.jpg" alt="He unbuckled the straps of his suitcase and turned the
cover backward on the floor" width="500" height="727" /><br/>
<span class="caption">He unbuckled the straps of his suitcase and turned the
cover backward on the floor</span></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"The 'minor results'?" she asked soberly.</p>
<p>"Why yes," said Stanton. "There were several things I didn't have room
to bring. There was a blanket-wrapper. And there was a—girl, and
there was a—"</p>
<p>Cornelia's blonde eyebrows lifted perceptibly. "A girl—whom you
didn't know at all—sent you a blanket-wrapper?" she whispered.</p>
<p>"Yes!" smiled Stanton. "You see no girl whom I knew—very well—seemed
to care a hang whether I froze to death or not."</p>
<p>"O—h," said Cornelia very, very slowly, "O—h." Her eyes had a
strange, new puzzled expression in them like the expression of a
person who was trying to look outward and think inward at the same
time.</p>
<p>"But you mustn't be so critical and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></SPAN></span> haughty about it all," protested
Stanton, "when I'm really trying so hard to explain everything
perfectly honestly to you—so that you'll understand exactly how it
happened."</p>
<p>"I should like very much to be able to understand exactly how it
happened," mused Cornelia.</p>
<p>Gingerly she approached in succession the roll of sample wall-paper,
the maps, the time-tables, the books, the little silver porringer, the
intimate-looking scrap of unfinished fancy-work. One by one Stanton
explained them to her, visualizing by eager phrase or whimsical
gesture the particularly lonesome and susceptible conditions under
which each gift had happened to arrive.</p>
<p>At the great pile of letters Cornelia's hand faltered a trifle.</p>
<p>"How many did I write you?" she asked with real curiosity.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Five thin ones, and a postal-card," said Stanton almost
apologetically.</p>
<p>Choosing the fattest looking letter that she could find, Cornelia
toyed with the envelope for a second. "Would it be all right for me to
read one?" she asked doubtfully.</p>
<p>"Why, yes," said Stanton. "I think you might read one."</p>
<p>After a few minutes she laid down the letter without any comment.</p>
<p>"Would it be all right for me to read another?" she questioned.</p>
<p>"Why, yes," cried Stanton. "Let's read them all. Let's read them
together. Only, of course, we must read them in order."</p>
<p>Almost tenderly he picked them up and sorted them out according to
their dates. "Of course," he explained very earnestly, "of course I
wouldn't think of showing these letters to any one ordinarily; but<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></SPAN></span>
after all, these particular letters represent only a mere business
proposition, and certainly this particular situation must justify one
in making extraordinary exceptions."</p>
<p>One by one he perused the letters hastily and handed them over to
Cornelia for her more careful inspection. No single associate detail
of time or circumstance seemed to have eluded his astonishing memory.
Letter by letter, page by page he annotated: "That was the week you
didn't write at all," or "This was the stormy, agonizing, God-forsaken
night when I didn't care whether I lived or died," or "It was just
about that time, you know, that you snubbed me for being scared about
your swimming stunt."</p>
<p>Breathless in the midst of her reading Cornelia looked up and faced
him squarely. "How could any girl—write all that nonsense?" she
gasped.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>It wasn't so much what Stanton answered, as the expression in his eyes
that really startled Cornelia.</p>
<p>"Nonsense?" he quoted deliberatingly. "But I like it," he said. "It's
exactly what I like."</p>
<p>"But I couldn't possibly have given you anything like—that,"
stammered Cornelia.</p>
<p>"No, I know you couldn't," said Stanton very gently.</p>
<p>For an instant Cornelia turned and stared a bit resentfully into his
face. Then suddenly the very gentleness of his smile ignited a little
answering smile on her lips.</p>
<p>"Oh, you mean," she asked with unmistakable relief; "oh, you mean that
really after all it wasn't your letter that jilted me, but my
temperament that jilted you?"</p>
<p>"Exactly," said Stanton.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>Cornelia's whole somber face flamed suddenly into unmistakable
radiance.</p>
<p>"Oh, that puts an entirely different light upon the matter," she
exclaimed. "Oh, now it doesn't hurt at all!"</p>
<p>Rustling to her feet, she began to smooth the scowly-looking wrinkles
out of her skirt with long even strokes of her bright-jeweled hands.</p>
<p>"I think I'm really beginning to understand," she said pleasantly.
"And truly, absurd as it sounds to say it, I honestly believe that I
care more for you this moment than I ever cared before, but—"
glancing with acute dismay at the cluttered suitcase on the floor,
"but I wouldn't marry you now, if we could live in the finest asylum
in the land!"</p>
<p>Shrugging his shoulders with mirthful appreciation Stanton proceeded
then and there to re-pack his treasures and end the interview.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>Just at the edge of the threshold Cornelia's voice called him back.</p>
<p>"Carl," she protested, "you are looking rather sick. I hope you are
going straight home."</p>
<p>"No, I'm not going straight home," said Stanton bluntly. "But here's
hoping that the 'longest way round' will prove even yet the very
shortest possible route to the particular home that, as yet, doesn't
even exist. I'm going hunting, Cornelia, hunting for Molly
Make-Believe; and what's more, I'm going to find her if it takes me
all the rest of my natural life!"</p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></SPAN></span></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />