ncapable of controlling usefully,
even of safely preserving....

Archie and Adelle were hungry at this period for more money and felt
themselves martyrized by the whim of an ill-natured old man who had
arbitrarily made them wait to be wholly happy. They talked perpetually
about what they should do with themselves "after" the great event,--the
sort of touring-car they should buy, the kind of establishment they
should keep, the best place to live in, etc. It must be somewhere in
Europe, of course, for neither was eager to return to America "where
everybody worked and there was nothing fit to eat," according to Archie.
Adelle's ideas of America, never extensive, were growing dimmer every
season, and the occasional friends who returned from the other shore
described their native land in unflattering terms. Adelle thought that
every American who could lived as much of the time as possible somewhere
in Europe, but she did not think much about it at this time.

They had no children. Adelle had no objections to child-bearing and
expected "sometime" to have "two or three" children. Archie thought
there would be plenty of time for that "later on" when they had their
money. Adelle was still very young, and in the present wandering state
of their life children would be a nuisance.

Finally they were neither happy nor unhappy. Restless was the adjective
that described them most closely. Their bodies and stomachs and nerves
and minds and souls were always in a state of disequilibrium, and they
were feeling about for equilibrium like blind kittens without forming
any successful plan of extricating themselves from their subconscious
state of dissatisfaction. With another order of gray matter in their
brains either one might have produced out of this disequilibrium some
fine, rare flower of form or color or words. But Archie's gray matter,
like Adelle's, was not expressive.

Their friends thought them happy as well as fortunate. Sadie Paul
reported to her sister and Eveline Glynn,--"Dell is crazy about her
Archie--she won't let him out of her sight. He's not such a bad sort,
but fearfully stuck on himself, just because Dell pets him so."

Adelle, as she frequently told Archie, infinitely preferred her choice
to Sadie's "Black-and-Tan," as she called the Count Zornec.

This was their state after eighteen months of married life.

XXVII

The trust company had left its ward severely alone since Mr. Smith's
visit to Paris. L