“Nonsense,” he said. He had already paid the waitress. “Ah—if you intend remaining here——” “No, I’m coming,” she said, meekly. “I just——” She rose, and as she did she looked up at him radiantly, facing him. “You—you’ve been ever so nice to me, Mr. Bromley.” Her cheeks were glowing, her lifted happy eyes were all too worshipfully eloquent; and for a moment, as the two stood there, Mr. Bromley felt a strange little embarrassment, this time not an annoyed embarrassment. Who can know what is in a young girl’s heart? Suddenly, to his own surprise, he felt a slight, inexplicable emotion;—something in Cornelia’s look pleased him and even touched him. Just for the five or six seconds that he knew this feeling, something mysterious, something charming, seemed about to happen. “No,” he said. “It’s you who were nice to me. I—I’ve enjoyed it—truly.” She drew a deep breath. “Have you _really_?” she cried. And with that, she turned and ran to the door, all sixteen. But, with the door open, she called back to him over her shoulder, “I’m glad it’s Friday, Mr. Bromley.” “Why?” “Because it’s only till Monday when school begins!” XIII HEARTBREAK SHE RAN out of the door and to the street, where she turned northward, away from home, with her cheeks afire and her heart still singing; but what it sang now was, “Monday! Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—Monday again!” All through the year she would see him on every one of those days. Cornelia was happy. She was altogether happy; and she had just spent the happiest hour of her life. Other happy hours she might know, and many different kinds of happiness, but never again an hour of such untouched happiness as this. Happiness unshadowed cannot come often after childhood, and sixteen is one of the years that close childhood. She was too happy to be with any one except herself; she could not talk to any one except herself; and so her feet bore her lightly to the open country outside the suburban town, and here, pleased with the bracing winter wind upon her face, she walked and walked—and her walking was more like dancing. She did not come home until the twilight of the short day had begun to verge into dusk; and, when she entered the house she went quickly up to her own room without seeing anybody on the way. In her heart she was singing gaily, “Monday! Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday——” But as she pressed the light on at a lamp upon her dressing-table, something disquieted her. She flew to her open desk, and, breathless, clasped both hands about her throat, for before her was her sacred mountain, but not as she had left it. The little papers had blown about the room. Someone had closed the window, and gathered the drawings together. Someone had left a paperweight upon them. Someone had seen the mountain. The door opened behind her, as Cornelia stood staring at this violation, and she turned to face her mother.