After a few minutes she laid down the letter without any comment. "Would it be all right for me to read another?" she questioned. "Why, yes," cried Stanton. "Let's read them all. Let's read them together. Only, of course, we must read them in order." 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 after all, these particular letters represent only a mere business proposition, and certainly this particular situation must justify one in making extraordinary exceptions." 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." Breathless in the midst of her reading Cornelia looked up and faced him squarely. "How could any girl--write all that nonsense?" she gasped. It wasn't so much what Stanton answered, as the expression in his eyes that really startled Cornelia. "Nonsense?" he quoted deliberatingly. "But I like it," he said. "It's exactly what I like." "But I couldn't possibly have given you anything like--that," stammered Cornelia. "No, I know you couldn't," said Stanton very gently. 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. "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?" "Exactly," said Stanton. Cornelia's whole somber face flamed suddenly into unmistakable radiance. "Oh, that puts an entirely different light upon the matter," she exclaimed. "Oh, now it doesn't hurt at all!" 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. "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!" Shrugging his shoulders with mirthful appreciation Stanton proceeded then and there to re-pack his treasures and end the interview. Just at the edge of the threshold Cornelia's voice called him back. "Carl," she protested, "you are looking rather sick. I hope you are going straight home."