Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/94

 "Yes," she said, "or old ones, either."

"H'm," I resumed; "what I was getting at was this: when I was a young fellow, with even less experience than I have now, I used rather to revel in reading tragedies and tales of dismally bitter and disillusioned men. All young fellows do. I suppose it intensifies the sense of their own existence. In the presence of dark and disastrous things—sin, crime, murder for love, and so on—they persuade themselves that they are drawing close to the 'throbbing heart of reality.

"Yes," said Cornelia, "you used to like tragedy."

"But now," I said, "I am following an entirely different clue. I have a theory that the only matter that is really worth investigating is happiness. And so I haunt the trails of people who are reputed to be happy, or who act as if they were happy; and I pester them for their secrets."

"An odious habit," she said. "Besides, you won't learn anything."

"Cornelia," I continued,—not solemnly, you understand, but with my lightest touch,—"are you as entirely happy as we all think you are?"

"You don't imagine that I should tell you if I were not, do you?" she said—this also with the light touch. "Of course I am!"