Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/280

 "Have you really found it? Are you really happy—Bluebird?"

"I like to have you call me Bluebird," she said. "I feel like one. I have never been so happy in my life as in this last month, since I have learned to keep the mood, the adorable mood, of the silence here by the sea."

"I guess," I said, "I caught a bit of it—your mood, to-night. But I know it won't stay. It's a mood that I can't count on. And I don't have it—often. Perhaps my setting isn't right. At any rate I don't seem able to establish the relations which you think are so important. So, with me, the mood is a lovely fugitive."

"I have it all the time," said Cornelia eagerly, "since I began to fill, really fill, my life with the things I love, and to leave the rest out: walking alone on the mesa; and being with the children; and talking with my sister and Mr. Blakewell (he's really a most unusual young man); and going to church in the dear little church here in La Jolla. I always liked to go to church: it made everything seem so certain and peaceful afterward—till Oliver and the children began to argue. And I liked religious music and the little choir boys in white and the lovely procession of them