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It was at Lucerne that Adelle's lover demanded rather brusquely why she was "so mortal scared of the schoolma'am?" Was she not a young woman of nineteen and of independent means, without the annoying necessity of consulting her parents in her choice of a lover?
Instead of their usual blankness or passive intelligence, they had a quality in them now of dream. And this gave Adelle's pale face a certain rare loveliness that in human faces does not depend upon color or line or emotional vivacity.
To Adelle's blunt salutation, "We want to get married, please!" and then, as if not sufficiently impressive, "Now right off!" he replied agreeably, not taking the time to remove the cigarette from his mouth, "Sure! That's easy." And he made it easy for them. He found the necessary blank forms in an office desk and filled them out according to the information the couple gave him.
He rolled over, settled himself into an easier position, and the tension of his small face relaxed. Instead of the frown of effort a beautiful smile broke over his face, as if at the touch of his mother's lips the character of his dreams had changed to something highly pleasurable. Adelle's eyes filled with unaccustomed tears, and she lingered there a few moments.
Herndon Hall, with its utterly false standards of everything that concerns woman's being, was the fruit of those ideals that have obtained about women, their position and education, for many centuries. And Herndon Hall was Adelle's accident the fate to which the trust officers in all good will consigned her.
She said something about staying on in Paris through June to work in the studio, but Pussy firmly closed the house and shipped the servants to Adelle's villa. If she only had not chosen Étretat, she wailed to Archie, but some nearer Normandy watering-place from which she might have motored up to Paris on one excuse or another and thus had glimpses of her lover! He must come to Étretat.
Adelle's pale face brightened. He was a good old sort, she thought, and wasn't going to make trouble, after all, merely lecture them a bit, and she composed her face properly to receive his scolding. It came, but it was not very bad, at least Adelle did not feel its sting.
He was an old man now, and it was permitted him to express thus the compulsion of Adelle's rare loveliness, thus to confide to her the sympathy of his own dreaming heart. The little ungloved hand lay within his old hand, warm and passive, not clinging, content to rest there in peace.
As if in defiance, as if to show that he could hit at least this woman who belonged to him by law, even though her possessions might not belong to him entirely, Archie's left hand came down upon Adelle's arm with sufficient force to be called a blow. Adelle dropped her grip of her husband's arm with a slight cry of fright and shame rather than of pain.
This put it into Adelle's mind that in the last resort she might defy Pussy and have her precious one all to herself in untrammeled freedom in other words, marry Archie. But she was really afraid of Miss Comstock, and also doubtful of what her guardian, the trust company, might do to her. For the present she was content, or nearly so, with what she had, and was not thinking much about marriage.
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