At the great pile of letters Cornelia's hand faltered a trifle.
"How many did I write you?" she asked with real curiosity.
"Five thin ones, and a postal-card," said Stanton almost apologetically.
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.
"Why, yes," said Stanton. "I think you might read one."
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."
"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!"
XI
Driving downtown again with every thought in his head, every plan, every purpose, hurtling around and around in absolute chaos, his roving eyes lit casually upon the huge sign of a detective bureau that loomed across the street. White as a sheet with the sudden new determination that came to him, and trembling miserably with the very strength of the determination warring against the weakness and fatigue of his body, he dismissed his cab and went climbing up the first narrow, dingy stairway that seemed most liable to connect with the brain behind the sign-board.
It was almost bed-time before he came down the stairs again, yet, "I think her name is Meredith, and I think she's gone to Vermont, and she has the most wonderful head of mahogany-colored hair that I ever saw in my life," were the only definite clues that he had been able to contribute to the cause.
In the slow, lagging week that followed, Stanton did not find himself at all pleased with the particular steps which he had apparently been obliged to take in order to ferret out Molly's real name and her real city address, but the actual audacity of the situation did not actually reach its climax until the gentle little quarry had been literally tracked to Vermont with detectives fairly baying on her trail like the melodramatic bloodhounds that pursue "Eliza" across the ice.
"Red-headed party found at Woodstock," the valiant sleuth had wired with unusual delicacy and caution.
"Denies acquaintance, Boston, everything, positively refuses interview, temper very bad, sure it's the party," the second message had come.
The very next northward-bound train found Stanton fretting the interminable hours away between Boston and Woodstock. Across the sparkling snow-smothered landscape his straining eyes went plowing on to their unknown destination. Sometimes the engine pounded louder than his heart. Sometimes he could not even seem to hear the grinding of the brakes above the dreadful throb-throb of his temples. Sometimes in horrid, shuddering chills he huddled into his great fur-coat and cursed the porter for having a disposition like a polar bear. Sometimes almost gasping for breath he went out and stood on the bleak rear platform of the last car and watched the pleasant, ice-cold rails go speeding back to Boston. All along the journey little absolutely unnecessary villages kept bobbing up to impede the progress of the train. All along the journey innumerable little empty railroad-stations, barren as bells robbed of their own tongues, seemed to lie waiting-waiting for the noisy engine-tongue to clang them into temporary noise and life.
Was his quest really almost at an end? Was it-was it? A thousand vague apprehensions tortured through his mind.
And then, all of a sudden, in the early, brisk winter twilight, Woodstock-happened!
Climbing out of the train Stanton stood for a second rubbing his eyes at the final abruptness and unreality of it all. Woodstock! What was it going to mean to him? Woodstock!
Everybody else on the platform seemed to be accepting the astonishing geographical fact with perfect simplicity. Already along the edge of the platform the quaint, old-fashioned yellow stage-coaches set on runners were fast filling up with utterly serene passengers.
A jog at his elbow made him turn quickly, and he found himself gazing into the detective's not ungenial face.
"Say," said the detective, "were you going up to the hotel first? Well you'd better not. You'd better not lose any time. She's leaving town in the morning." It was beyond human nature for the detective man not to nudge Stanton once in the ribs. "Say," he grinned, "you sure had better go easy, and not send in your name or anything." His grin broadened suddenly in a laugh. "Say," he confided, "once in a magazine I read something about a lady's 'piquant animosity'. That's her! And cute? Oh, my!"
Five minutes later, Stanton found himself lolling back in the quaintest, brightest, most pumpkin-colored coach of all, gliding with almost magical smoothness through the snow-glazed streets of the little narrow, valley-town.