“You mean you think I don’t look——” He interrupted earnestly. “I’m afraid it’s too soon for you to let me tell you how I think you look. But you do laugh at my names, don’t you?” “No; they don’t seem funny to me.” “Don’t you ever laugh except when things are funny?” he asked. “Yes, I do,” she said. “I’ve laughed thousands of times when everything was horribly unfunny.” “Then why did you laugh?” For an instant she looked at him gravely. “To try to be ‘popular,’” she said. Plainly he thought this funny enough for laughter. “That _is_ a joke!” he said. “But if laughing makes you any more ‘popular’ than you would be without it, I hope for this one evening at least you’ll be as solemn as an obelisk.” Of course Elsie said, “Why?” “Because if you laugh I won’t get to see anything of you at all. I’m afraid I won’t anyhow.” He spoke with gravity, meaning what he said; and the event proved his fear justified. He got halfway round the country club ballroom with her, after the theatricals, a surprising number of times, but seldom much farther. However, he conclusively proved his possession of that admirable quality, dogged persistence, and so did the other young gentlemen of the dinner party. So did more than these, including probably a majority of the men and youths, married or single, present that evening at the Blue Hills Club. Elsie wondered when the spell would break. It seemed impossible that she wouldn’t be found out presently as a masquerader and dropped into her old homelike invisibility. But whether the break came or not, she knew she would never again be so miserable as she had been, because she was every moment more and more confidently daring to know that she was beautiful. She laughed at a great many things that weren’t funny during this gracious evening; for laughter may spring as freely from excited happiness as from humour; but she made no effort to be noisy—noisiness appeared to be not a necessity at all, but superfluous. And what pleased her most, the girls were “nice” to her, too, as she defined their behaviour;—they formed part of the clusters about her when the music was silent, and they eagerly competed to arrange future entertainment for her. Elsie loved them all, these strange, adorable people who had not seen the wrong thing about her. The old walls built round her by her own town, enclosing her with such seeming massive permanence and so tightly, now at a stroke proved to be illusion; she was discovering that they were but apparitions all unreal, and that this world is mysterious and can be happily so. Something of its humorous mysteries in dealing with young hearts another person, near her, also learned that night; for Cornelia Cromwell, by coincidence, had a queer experience of her own.