(And when the explosion in Seaboard came off, it left deep scars all through California society.) All this Archie tried to make Adelle understand, when unexpectedly she gained a knowledge of his operations in Seaboard. She happened to open some letters from his brokers that came to Archie during his absence--letters that clamored for more ready money with which to pay for options that Archie had taken upon the common stock of the new company. Adelle was disturbed when she discovered that more than a million of her money had already gone into Seaboard. The couple had some sharp words about the matter, in which Adelle put the thing rather too bluntly to Archie,-- "What do you know about railroads? You aren't a business man--you never earned a dollar in business in your life!" Adelle was probably remembering how she had given Archie the only order he had ever received for his painting. Archie naturally resented her allusion to his penniless and dependent state. He knew, he asserted, quite as much as other men, whom he instanced, all of whom managed their wives' money affairs without being scolded for what they did. But why, Adelle urged more softly, did he have to speculate--try to make more money than they already had? And Archie's somewhat incoherent reply was much the same as Irene Pointer's reasons for going into the society of one's fellows. To try to make more money when one already had the use of a great deal was an honorable and sensible ambition--every one would tell her so. All moneyed men who were worth their salt were always alive to opportunities of enlarging their possessions. Did she want her husband to sit around with folded hands and do nothing in the world? Archie waxed righteous and right-minded, which is the easiest way to eloquence. Adelle was silent, though not convinced by his reasoning any more than she had been by Irene's about "taking her part." Both seemed to make life needlessly dangerous and complicated, under the disguise of duty. But she could not endure sullenness and bad temper in Archie. Having taken the sort of husband she had, she must make the best of life with him, even if he hazarded her fortune in doubtful enterprises. She remembered with comfort that there was a great deal of money, and ultimately would be even more when Clark's Field was finally liquidated. Archie could hardly go so wrong in investments as to make away with all of it. So she agreed to his selling another block of General Electric or Bell Telephone and taking up his options, and having thus made up their difference, they drifted on their way.