There were many stations on her road. And first of all her husband, Archie. Adelle began to think again about Archie in the new light she had. She had not thought about him at all since she had dropped him so summarily from her life after the fire at Highcourt. She wrote him finally a considerable letter, in which she made plain the results of her thinking. It was a surprising letter, as Archie felt, not only in length, but in its point of view and its kindly tone. She seemed to see the great wrong she had ignorantly done to him. The youth she had blindly taken to gratify her green passion and to become the father of her only child! She had ruined him, as far as any one human being can ruin another, and now she knew it. She had been the stupid means of providing him with a feast of folly, and then had abandoned him when he behaved badly. So she wrote him gently, as one who at last comprehended that mercy and forgiveness are due all those whom we harm upon our road either consciously or ignorantly, giving them evil to eat. Yet she saw the crude folly of attempting to resume their marriage in any way, and did not for once consider it. They had sinned gravely against each other and must face life anew, separately, recognizing that theirs was an irreparable mistake. So she wrote unpassionately of the legal divorce which must come. And she gave him money, promising him more as he might need it, within reason. Archie straightway put a good part of it into oil wells because every one in California was talking oil, and of course lost it all. Then Adelle sent him money to buy a nut ranch, in one of the interior valleys, and there we may leave Archie growing English walnuts fitfully. At times he felt aggrieved with Adelle, complained that he had been abused as a man who had married a rich woman and then been thrown aside when he considered himself placed for life. But also at times he had a fleeting conception of Adelle's character, realized that she was not now the girl who had married him out of hand after a mad night ride across France. She was bigger and better than he now, and he was not really worthy of her. But these rare moments of insight usually came only when Adelle had answered favorably his pleas for more money. * * * * * One memory of her early years came back to Adelle at this time--a picture that had been dark to her then. It was when she first met her little Mexican friend at the fashionable boarding-school. She could not understand the girl's foreign name, and so the little Mexican had written it out in pencil,--"Diane Merelda," and underneath she wrote in tiny letters,--"F. de M." "What do those mean?" Adelle had demanded, pointing to the mysterious letters. "Fille de Marie," the little Catholic lisped, and translated,--"Daughter of the Blessed Virgin; you understand?"