Adelle herself was content not to work hard at the manufacture of jewelry, although if she had been encouraged, she might have become almost second-rate in this minor art. She, too, was indolent, if not by disposition, by training, and Europe offers abundant distraction of a semi-intellectual sort to fill the days of people like Archie and Adelle. To loaf herself was not so fatal for Adelle as to acquiesce in Archie's loafing, to accept the parasitic notion for her man that obtained in the easy-going circles she knew. "Oh, well," she said to Sadie, "why should Archie work if he doesn't want to?" Sadie saw no reason and suggested,--"There isn't one of those painters who would stick at it if he didn't have to." Like all poor people, they hadn't any luck; that was her idea. And Adelle cultivated another dangerous conception of marriage. "It's enough for me if he's good to me and loves me--I have plenty of money for us both." In other words, she thought that she should be satisfied to keep her lover always as an appanage of her magic lamp, to maintain a human being and a male human being as she might maintain a motor-car or an estate or a stable, as something desirable and pleasurable, contributing to her happiness,--the privilege of her fortunate position as a woman of means. There were many rich women who had that idea or cultivated it as a solace to their defeated souls. "Isn't he a dear?" she would say to Sadie Paul in these moments of proud consciousness of possession; and conversely she would say sternly when some case of masculine errancy was brought to her notice,--"If Archie treated me like that, he'd find his bag packed and sitting outside the door!" So she was very fussy about her husband's appearance,--his dress and manners and appointments; and insisted upon giving him every accessory of luxury, everything that rich men supposably enjoy. As her nearest and dearest possession, she was more concerned with his brave appearance than she was with her own. She "dolled" him up, as Sadie Paul laughingly called it. "Isn't he cunning?" was one of her common expressions of marital happiness. Occasionally, in more serious moods, she might talk largely about Archie's "going into business" when they "got their money," but as time went on and Archie displayed little aptitude for managing money, she talked less about this. Adelle would have been content to buy the Basque villa they had rented and establish herself and Archie there in complete idleness and luxury, provided he would always be "good" to her, by which she meant faithful to those unconsidered marriage vows made in the Paris consulate, and not too cross.