imitations of the new
art, which were much admired at the Villa Ponitowski. Eveline, not to be
outdone, took up bookbinding, though she scarcely knew the inside of one
book from another. The art of tooling leather was then cultivated by
women of fashion in New York: it gave them something to talk about and a
chance to play in a studio.

I should like to record that Adelle developed a latent talent for making
beautiful things in the art she had inadvertently chosen to practice.
But that would be straining the truth. It requires imagination to
produce original and pleasing objects in small jewelry, and of
imagination Adelle had not betrayed a spark. Moreover, it takes
patience, application, and a skillful hand to become a good craftsman in
any art, and these virtues had no encouragement in the life that Adelle
had led since leaving the Church Street house. So in spite of the
admiration aroused by her _bijoux_ when she gave them to the inmates of
the Villa, it must be admitted that they were more like the efforts of a
school child who has prepared its handiwork for presents to admiring
relatives than anything else. But at least it was a real interest, and
it raised Adelle in her own estimation. Some of the happiest days she
had known were spent in the studio of Miss Cornelia Baxter, on the Rue
de l'Universite. She would have spent more time there if her other
engagements or distractions had not constantly interrupted her pursuit
of art. Her position of practical independence and unlimited means gave
her a prestige in "Pussy" Comstock's household that exhausted most of
her time and energy. Her car and herself were in constant demand. And in
the Easter holidays "the family" went to Rome for a month, and to London
at the opening of the season there in June. So not much time was left
for the pursuit of art.

Yet this effort to make jewelry on Adelle's part is important, as the
first sign of promise of individuality. It betrayed the possibility of a
taste. She loved color, richness of substance, and Europe was satisfying
this instinct. Pale and colorless herself, mentally perhaps anaemic or
at least lethargic, she discovered in herself a passion for color and
richness. Certain formless dreams about life began to haunt her
mind--vague desires of warmth and color and emotion. Thus Paris was
developing the latent possibilities of sensuousness in this pale
offshoot of Puritanism.

XVII

The winter had passed agreeably