At last mother kissed her good night, and she was alone in her little bed. It was hard to get to sleep. What an eventful party it had been! Since supper time she seemed to have lived years and years. She had been a success even though Raymond Bonner had said--that. Anyway, Jim was a better dancer than Raymond, and handsomer and nicer--besides the uniform. He was more poetical too--much more. What was it he had said about liking her?... better dancer than any other... Funny she should feel so happy after Raymond... Maybe she was just a vain, inconstant, coquettish... She strove to focus on the possibility of her frailty. She turned her face to the window. Through the lace curtains shone the moonlight, the gleaming path along which she had so often flown out to be a fairy. But to-night she didn't wish to be a fairy; just to be herself... The moonlight flowed in and engulfed her, a great, eternal, golden-white mystery. And its mystery became her mystery. She was the mystery of the moon, of the universe, of Life. And the tune in her heart, which could take on so many bewildering variations, became the Chant of Mystery. How interesting, how tremendously, ineffably interesting was Life! She slept. CHAPTER IV. MISSY TACKLES ROMANCE Melissa was out in the summerhouse, reading; now and then lifting her eyes from the big book on her lap to watch the baby at play. With a pail of sand, a broken lead-pencil and several bits of twig, the baby had concocted an engrossing game. Melissa smiled indulgently at his absurd absorption; while the baby, looking up, smiled back as one who would say: “What a stupid game reading is to waste your time with!” For the standpoint of three-years-old is quite different from that of fourteen-going-on-fifteen. Missy now felt almost grown-up; it had been eons since SHE was a baby, and three; even thirteen lay back across a chasm so wide her thoughts rarely tried to bridge it. Besides, her thoughts were kept too busy with the present. Every day the world was presenting itself as a more bewitching place. Cherryvale had always been a thrilling place to live in; but this was the summer which, surely, would ever stand out in italics in her mind. For, this summer, she had come really to know Romance. Her more intimate acquaintance with this enchanting phenomenon had begun in May, the last month of school, when she learned that Miss Smith, her Algebra teacher, received a letter every day from an army officer. An army officer!--and a letter every day! And she knew Miss Smith very well, indeed! Ecstasy! Miss Smith, who looked too pretty to know so much about Algebra, made an adorable heroine of Romance.