stimulants of odor and color, appealed to
her from the very first. She was quite happy, and Archie seemed to
expand in his native soil and was less peevish than he had grown to be
latterly.

After the wedding, which according to the local newspapers was a very
grand affair, but which unfortunately does not come into this story,
Archie and Adelle prolonged their visit. They found the easy atmosphere
of this pretty California town so agreeable, with its busy air of
luxurious leisure, that they took a furnished house for the remainder of
the season, and in the autumn they rented a larger place out on the
hills behind the town, having a lovely view of the great valley and the
distant waters of the Bay, with the blue tips of the inland hills rising
through the mists. They still talked confidently of returning to Europe
to live.

They did not, however, at least for permanent residence. Archie was too
content with life in this land of sunshine, flowers, and informal
living, to leave. He said quite flatly now that he did not think he was
meant to be a painter and there was no point in being an artist if you
did not have to be something. Adelle perceived that according to Archie
there was not much point in doing anything unless one had to. She began
to suspect dimly the existence of a deep human law. "By the sweat of thy
brow," it had been writ in that Puritan Bible she studied at the First
Congregational Church in Alton. Then it had a very definite meaning even
to her child's mind, but during the easy years since, she had forgotten
it altogether. Now something like its stern truth was boring into her
consciousness. It seemed that when the larger incentives of living--the
big universal ones--had been removed for any cause, human beings were
often at a loss what to do with themselves. They sighed for "freedom"
when bound to the common wheel, but when released, as Archie and Adelle
had been, the average man or woman had but the feeblest notion of what
to do with his "freedom."

With women such as Adelle the tragedy is less apparent than with men,
because woman's life for uncounted ages has consisted in great part of
playing games with herself at the dictates of men, and large wealth
assists her in making these games socially interesting and agreeable.
Adelle, to be sure, had no social ambition of the conventional sort. She
was more content than Archie with merely being married and having plenty
of money to spend in any way she