(They say that in marriage the first trivial events are significant of what will happen thereafter, like straws upon the stream betraying which way the current flows. Possibly Archie's question indicates the quality of this marriage, also the fact that presently Adelle set their course.) The consular clerk, judging that his compatriots were affluent, had hinted at the propriety of a wedding feast at the Cafe de Paris; but Adelle, who hated dinners, vetoed the suggestion. Archie was for returning unsentimentally to the empty studio for their wedding night, as they were short of cash and it was after banking hours. But Adelle had not dashed madly across half of France in the night to spend the first hours of her honeymoon in a dusty, hot studio on the Rue de l'Universite. She turned the car into the great Avenue and swept on past the Arch, through the Bois, out into the open country. Ultimately the lack of _petrol_ stopped them at a little wayside _cabaret_ some miles outside of the fortifications, where, too exhausted to proceed farther, they decided to spend the night. XXIV Fortunately Adelle was not of an imaginative habit of mind. She rarely envisaged with keenness anything of the future, and thus escaped many of the perplexities and annoyances of life, with some of its pleasures. Hers was always a single road,--from desire to the gratification of desire,--as it had been with Archie. Thus far her nature had developed few disturbing impulses, which accounts for the simple, not to say dull, character of her story up to the present. Even the supreme desire of woman's heart had come to her in a commonplace way and had been fulfilled precipitately, as the desires of the untutored usually are, but uncomplexly. As she fondly contemplated her husband the next morning, she did not realize that in one swift day she had accomplished the main drama of her existence and henceforth must be content with the humdrum course of life. Archie was scarcely more concerned with mental complexities. "Won't Pussy Comstock be jarred!" was about the depth of his reaction to the momentous step they had taken. Adelle smiled a wary smile in answer: she distinctly enjoyed having both outwitted Pussy and escaped the bother of opposition to her desires and the shafts of ridicule. She stroked her master's bright red hair and kissed him again. They felt very well content with themselves this morning. Archie certainly ought to have congratulated himself. He had a young wife, who loved him to distraction and who was extremely well-to-do, and, moreover, had no inconvenient relatives to "cut up ugly" over her imprudent step. There was only a trust company to reckon with, and what can a trust company do when it feels fussed and aggrieved?...