etime of toil and self-denial. Was it not _hers_?
Had the law not made it inalienably a part of her? Such is human nature
in a capitalistic society.

Bellevue began to gossip about the couple at Highcourt, and divided as
always into two camps with shades of opinion within each camp. The women
were generally for Archie, even if he had been foolish with his wife's
money and was conducting his "affair" with Irene Pointer rather
recklessly. If his wife were less stupid and selfish about not going
about with him in society, she could have "held him." The men liked
Archie well enough, but knew that he was "no good."

XXXVII

It was some time after the young mason's return to his job before Adelle
even learned his name. She had no curiosity about his name, indicating
how little of the personal or sentimental there was in the interest she
felt in him. He was just the "mason," and she always addressed him as
"mason" until one day she heard the foreman call him--"Clark"; and then,
when the foreman had passed on, she said with mild curiosity,--

"Is your name Clark?"

"Yes," the man replied with a touch of pride in the pure English
name,--"Clark without the e. I'm Tom Clark. Father's name was Stanley
Clark, same as grandfather's. Everybody about Sacramento used to know
old Stan Clark!"

"My name was Clark, too, before I was married," Adelle remarked.

"Did you spell it with an _e_?" Tom Clark asked.

"No, the same as yours, without the _e_," she replied.

"We must be related somewheres," the mason laughed, with a sense of
irony.

"Where did your family come from?"

"Somewhere East--Missouri, I think. But that was long ago--before the
gold times. Grandfather Stan came out in forty-nine and settled on the
Sacramento River, and that was where father was raised."

Adelle felt a slight increase in her interest in the mason from their
having the same name, and she remarked idly,--

"So your family lived once in Missouri?"

"The Clarks came from Missouri--that's all I know. Mother's folks were
Scotch-Irish, and that's where I get my red head, I guess!"

Like most Americans of his class he knew nothing more of his origin than
the preceding two generations. The family was lost in the vague limbo of
"back East somewheres." Yet he was proud that the Clarks had come from
the East and were among the first Americans to enter the golden land of
opportunity. And he apologized for the failure of his ancestors to
attach t