gave her name and address. Adelle was in fact a little
frightened by her own extravagance, but persisted with a child's
curiosity to find out the limit of her magic lamp. She did not reach it,
however. Mr. Crane at her request had opened an account for her at the
trust company's correspondent on upper Fifth Avenue, and apparently it
was of a size that produced respect in the heart of the shopkeeper.

All these purchases, the clothes and the jewelry and the other rubbish
that the girl bought, gave her no special pleasure, gratified no
desires: she did not know what she could do with half the things at
Herndon Hall. What gave her keen pleasure was the prestige of lavish
spending.... After a debauch of theaters and dinners and shopping, the
four girls were again taken in tow by the sophisticated "Rosy" and went
up the river to Herndon Hall for Adelle's third year of boarding-school.

XV

Adelle Clark was thoroughly infected with the corruption of property by
this time, and the coming years merely confirmed the ideas and the
habits that had been started. She was now seventeen and an "old girl" at
the Hall, privileged to torture less sophisticated girls when they
presented themselves, if she had felt the desire to do so. She had not
forgotten her Church Street existence: it had been much too definite to
be easily forgotten. But she had been removed from it long enough to
realize herself thoroughly in her new life and to know that it was not a
dream. She would always remember Church Street, her aunt and uncle, and
the laborious years of poverty with which it was identified; but
gradually that part of her life was becoming the dream, while Herndon
Hall and the Aladdin lamp of her fortune were the reality. By means of
the latter she had won her position among her mates, and naturally she
respected more and more the source of her power. Eveline Glynn "took her
up" this year, and quite replaced the gentler Diane Merelda in her
affections.

There was if anything less study this year than before. The older girls
scouted the idea of studying anything. Most of them expected to leave
school forever the next spring and under the auspices of their mothers
to enter the marriage game. A few intended as a preliminary to travel in
Europe, "studying art or music," But the minds of all were much more
occupied with love than anything else. Although the sex interest was
still entirely dormant in Adelle, she learned a great deal abou