"Dear Cornelia:
"No, I meant 'as little' as you need to be loved. I have no adequate explanation to make. I have no adequate apology to offer. I don't think anything. I don't hope anything. All I know is that I suddenly believe positively that our engagement is a mistake. Certainly I am neither giving you all that I am capable of giving you, nor yet receiving from you all that I am capable of receiving. Just this fact should decide the matter I think.
"Carl."
Cornelia did not wait to write an answer to this. She telegraphed instead. The message even in the telegraph operator's handwriting looked a little nervous.
"Do you mean that you are tired of it?" she asked quite boldly.
With miserable perplexity Stanton wired back. "No, I couldn't exactly say that I was tired of it."
Cornelia's answer to that was fluttering in his hands within twelve hours.
"Do you mean that there is someone else?" The words fairly ticked themselves off the yellow page.
It was twenty-four hours before Stanton made up his mind just what to reply. Then, "No, I couldn't exactly say there is anybody else," he confessed wretchedly.
Cornelia's mother answered this time. The telegram fairly rustled with sarcasm. "You don't seem to be very sure about anything," said Cornelia's mother.