g on twenty," said Cornelia. "Why?"

"Oh, nothing. You can't begin too young; though some people think you
oughtn't to come before you're eighteen. I look upon my days before I
came here as simply wasted. Don't you want to go out and sit on the
stairs awhile?"

"I don't believe I do," said Cornelia, taking up her drawing again, as
if she were going on with it.

"Horrors!" Miss Maybough put her hand out over the sketch. "You don't
mean that you're going to carry it any farther?"

"Why, it isn't finished yet," Cornelia began.

"Of _course_ it isn't, and it never ought to be! I hope you're not
going to turn out a _niggler_! _Please_ don't! I couldn't bear to have
you. Nobody will respect you if you _finish_. Don't! If you won't come
out with me and get a breath of fresh air, do start a new drawing! I
want them to see this in the rough. It's _so_ bold."

Miss Maybough had left her own drawing in the rough, but it could not
be called bold; though if she had seen the block hand with a faltering
eye, she seemed to have had a fearless vision of many other things, and
she had covered her paper with a fantastic medley of grotesque shapes,
out of that imagination which she had given Cornelia to know was so
fatally mischievous to her in its uninvited activities. "_Don't_ look
at them!" she pleaded, when Cornelia involuntarily glanced at her
study. "My only hope is to hate them. I almost _pray_ to be delivered
from them. Let's talk of something else." She turned the sheet over.
"Do you mind my having said that about your drawing?"

"No!" said Cornelia, provoked to laughter by the solemnity of the
demand. "Why should I?"

"Oh, I don't know. Do you think you shall like me? I mean, do you care
if I like _you_--very, _very_ much?"

"I don't suppose I could stop it if I did, could I?" asked Cornelia.

The Sphinx seemed to find heart to smile. "Of course, I'm ridiculous.
But I do hope we're going to be friends. Tell me about yourself. Or,
have some more tea!"

XIV.

"I don't want any more tea, thank you," said Cornelia, "and there isn't
anything to tell."

"There must be!" the other girl insisted, clinging to her bottle with
tragic intensity. "Any one can see that _you've_ lived. What part of
the country did you come from?"

"Ohio," said Cornelia, as the best way to be done with it.

"And have you ever been in Santa Fe?"

"Goodness, no! Why, it's in New Mexico!"

"Yes; I was born there. Then my father went to