happiest period of Adelle's existence. Her marriage
had begun to prove uncomfortable in Europe and threatened badly at
Arivista, because there was not enough of anything between her and her
husband to support idleness alone. It was much better at Bellevue, for
here Archie was taken care of, not always in a safe way, but, as far as
Adelle knew, satisfactorily. The rich, sensuous country, with its
peculiar profusion of exotic vegetation and the luxury of perpetual good
weather, made Adelle, pale offspring of an outworn Puritanism, bloom,
especially after the birth of her child. It was as if all the desires of
the old Clarks to escape the hardships of their bleak lives found at
last their fulfillment in her. She expanded under the influence of
warmth and color; for climate is a larger moral factor than is usually
recognized. In California the struggle for life is a meaningless figure
of speech, and Adelle did not like struggling. She loved to putter about
in the overgrown garden and to slumber in the sun beside her little boy,
refusing to descend to the delights of the club and Bellevue hospitality
even after she had no excuse. When Irene took her to task for her
dawdling by herself she gurgled contentedly,--

"What's the good of doing those things? Archie likes it--he sees the
crowd at the club--that's enough for him."

"You've got to take your position," Irene remonstrated with a new pose.
She herself aspired to lead on the score of her family's antiquity in
Bellevue.

"What's that?" Adelle asked blankly.

It was difficult as Irene found to explain just what position Adelle
Davis should take in human society, just what it meant to be a "leader."
But she talked much about "the world going by one," and "duties of our
position," and "keeping in touch," with a note of mature tolerance and
responsibility in her voice. To all of which Adelle opposed merely a
lazy stare. In her gray eyes she seemed to mirror the fussy little
social life of this ideal country town, with its spread of motors about
the station on the arrival of the afternoon train from the city, its
properly garbed men and women strenuously amusing themselves at the
country club, its numerous "places," all very much alike, with their
gardens and greenhouses and tennis-courts, and ten masters' and five
servants' rooms, and all the rest of it.

If Adelle could find no very cogent reason why she should make herself
toilsomely a pillar of this society, shall we b