generations the haven of love, especially of irregular or illicit love:
but its attraction evaporates swiftly after the ceremony has taken
place. No spot where the male cannot stretch himself and get away from
domesticity for a few hours is safe except for the diviner, more
ecstatic forms of passion. In a few weeks the couple became deadly bored
with Venice and its picture postcard replica of life. At Archie's
suggestion they next sought Munich, where some of his artist
acquaintance had settled.

This was an atmosphere of work, more or less, and Adelle amused herself
by thinking that she and her husband were members of that glorious band
of free lances of art. They took a studio apartment and set up their
crafts jointly. If either had had the real stuff of the artist, it might
have gone well; but two idle and rather uninformed persons in the same
studio produce disaster. Munich soon became an affair of beer, skittles,
and music in company with the more careless spirits that gathered there
that winter. Among them happened to be Sadie Paul.

A good deal had happened to the California sisters, and as the "two
Pols" will come into Adelle's life later on, their story can be briefly
given here. Irene, the sister who had brutally betrayed Adelle in a
spirit of careless mischief, had attracted with her ripe California
charm a young Englishman of family. Mr. Hermann Paul, the "San Francisco
railroad man" referred to by Miss Comstock, meantime had died, and Irene
had gone home to join her mother and younger brothers and ultimately was
married to her Englishman. She divided her time thereafter about equally
between England and the new earthly paradise of the Pacific. Her sister
Sadie had determined to remain in Europe, under other chaperonage than
Pussy Comstock. It was rumored that a young Hungarian nobleman was
hanging somewhere in the horizon, but for the present she played about
with Adelle and Archie. Apparently Sadie Paul did not share her sister's
prejudices about "the red-headed bounder," for she flirted unconcernedly
with Archie as far as he would go, which to do Archie justice was not
dangerously far. Adelle, good-natured and easy-going by disposition,
welcomed the return of her old school friend and was not in the least
disturbed by her flirtatious attempts with Archie. That sort of amorous
pretense was more or less the habit of the world she had known, and
besides, she was aware that Sadie was "having a desperate affai