t it from
her schoolmates. Those good people who believe in a censorship of
literature for the sake of protecting the innocent American girl should
become enrolled at Herndon Hall. There they might be occasionally
horrified, but they would come out wiser mortals. Adelle knew all about
incredible scandals. Divorce, with the reasons for it,--especially the
statutory one,--was freely discussed, and a certain base, pandering
sheet of fashionable gossip was taken in at the Hall and eagerly
devoured each week by the girls, who tried to guess at the thinly
disguised persons therein pilloried. Thus Adelle became fully acquainted
with the facts of sex in their abnormal as well as more normal aspects.
That she got no special personal harm from this irregular education and
from the example of "the two Pols" was due solely to her own unawakened
temperament. Life had no gloss for her, and it had no poetic appeal. She
supposed, when she considered the matter at all, that sometime as a
woman she would be submitted to the coil of passion and sex, like all
the others about whom her friends talked incessantly. They seemed to
regard every man as a possible source of excitement to a woman. But she
resolved for her part to put off the interference of this fateful
influence as long as possible. Sometime, of course, she must marry and
have a child,--that was part of the fate of a girl with money of her
own,--and then she should hope to marry a nice man who would not scold
or ill-treat her or prefer some other woman--that was all.

"Dell is just a lump of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own
plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to
wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by assuming the man's
aggressive role.

* * * * *

Thus the last months of her formal education slipped by. Adelle went
through the easy routine of the Hall like the other girls, riding
horseback a good deal during pleasant weather, taking a lively interest
in dancing, upon which great stress was laid by Miss Thompson as an
accomplishment and healthy exercise. She took a mild share in the
escapades of her more lively friends, but for the most part her life was
dull, though she did not feel it. The life of the rich, instead of being
varied and full of deep experience, is actually in most cases
exceedingly monotonous and narrowing. The common belief that wealth is
an open sesame to a life of universal human