There followed for one week the most exciting and the most taxing episode in Adelle's small existence. She never had time for naps or odd moments of indolent nothings. In spite of the languorous heat, she became alert and schemed all her waking moments how best to make time for Archie. After a few days she bribed her maid so that she could get out of the hotel to a gondola after the others had gone to their rooms for the night. It was all a piece of pure recklessness, and Adelle was hardly adept enough to have carried it on long without detection. Fortunately, Miss Comstock was much occupied with some important English people, for whose sake she had really dragged the party down to Venice. And for seven days Adelle spent rapturous hours behind the black curtains of a gondola, varied by hardly less exciting hours of planning to bring her joy once more to her lips. Then Miss Comstock's English friends departed and the family set out for the North. They went by the International and Archie followed more slowly by the omnibus. He overtook the party at Lucerne, but Lucerne is not as well adapted as Venice for the shy retreats of love. They were content to return to Paris, where they imagined their liberty would be less circumscribed....
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? 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. Her lover must be satisfied with stolen moments and secret meetings in public places, with an occasional kiss.
Marriage was really the only solution, and Archie knew it. If Adelle had not been possessed of such a very large golden spoon, the whole affair might have resulted differently and more disastrously. But her fortune both endangered and protected her. For Archie was no worse and no better than many a young man of his antecedents and condition. It is, perhaps, to be doubted if he would have contented himself indefinitely with innocent love-making, if the girl had not been so far removed from him in estate.... He meant to marry Adelle when he could, which meant as soon as it would be safe for her to marry. That might not be for another two years, until she was mistress of herself in law and of her fortune.
Shortly after their return to Paris, the "home" at Neuilly was closed for the summer and the family went to Étretat to occupy a villa that Adelle had leased previous to her infatuation. There seemed no way of escaping Étretat without betraying her real reasons. 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. But Archie was again without funds, living on the bounty of a hospitable fellow-countryman. After a fortnight of loneliness beside the sea, Adelle invented an elaborate pretext to return to Paris, but Miss Comstock insisted on accompanying her and stuck so closely to her side during three hot days that there was no chance for a sight of Archie. At last Adelle was sulkily dragged back to Étretat. Then she asked Miss Baxter to visit her and induced that good-natured young woman to send Archie a sufficient sum of money, as coming from an admirer of his art, to enable him to take up his residence in the neighborhood. Miss Baxter demurred over "giving him such a head," but finally was persuaded. Archie Davis was probably more surprised than ever before in his life to learn that one of his loose efforts on canvas had so impressed an American amateur of the arts that the latter had given Miss Baxter a five-hundred-dollar check for him and an order for a seascape from the Brittany shore. Behold Archie established at Pluydell in a picturesque thatched cottage with his easel and paint-box! Pluydell is on the road from Étretat to Fécamp, and not over ten minutes' ride in a swift motor-car from the villa that Adelle occupied.
The young man painted intermittently during August, and Adelle discovered a mad passion for driving her new runabout alone, which her friends naturally voted quite "piggy" in her. If she was occasionally bullied into taking a companion with her, she drove the car so recklessly around the roughest country lanes that the friend never asked for another chance to ride with her. And thus she was free many times to make the dash over the familiar bit of chalk road, leave her car beneath the yellow rose-vine that covered the cottage, and walk across the sand to that particular corner of the wide beach where the young American had established himself with umbrella and painting tools....
What did they do with themselves all the hours that Adelle contrived to snatch for her Archie? First there was a good deal of kissing. Adelle grew fonder of this emotional expression as she became accustomed to it, and sometimes rather wearied Archie with her tenderness. Then there was a good deal of affectionate fondling, rumpling his red hair, pulling his clothes and tie into place, criticizing his appearance and health. Adelle when she was at the doll age never had had a chance for these things, and now all her woman's instincts began to bloom at once. She wanted to dress and care for her treasure and deluged him with small trinkets, many of them made by her own somewhat bungling hands. After these more intimate desires had been gratified, Adelle might take a critical look at the canvas over which Archie was dawdling and pronounce it "pretty" or "odd," or ask what it was meant to be. Then throwing herself down on the sand or turf and pulling her broad straw hat over her face she prepared for "talk." "Talk" consisted mostly of question and answer,—
"Where did you go last night?"
"Casino."
"Whom did you see at the casino?"
"Same crowd."