I should like to record that Adelle developed a latent talent for making beautiful things in the art she had inadvertently chosen to practice. But that would be straining the truth. It requires imagination to produce original and pleasing objects in small jewelry, and of imagination Adelle had not betrayed a spark. Moreover, it takes patience, application, and a skillful hand to become a good craftsman in any art, and these virtues had no encouragement in the life that Adelle had led since leaving the Church Street house. So in spite of the admiration aroused by her _bijoux_ when she gave them to the inmates of the Villa, it must be admitted that they were more like the efforts of a school child who has prepared its handiwork for presents to admiring relatives than anything else. But at least it was a real interest, and it raised Adelle in her own estimation. Some of the happiest days she had known were spent in the studio of Miss Cornelia Baxter, on the Rue de l'Universite. She would have spent more time there if her other engagements or distractions had not constantly interrupted her pursuit of art. Her position of practical independence and unlimited means gave her a prestige in "Pussy" Comstock's household that exhausted most of her time and energy. Her car and herself were in constant demand. And in the Easter holidays "the family" went to Rome for a month, and to London at the opening of the season there in June. So not much time was left for the pursuit of art. Yet this effort to make jewelry on Adelle's part is important, as the first sign of promise of individuality. It betrayed the possibility of a taste. She loved color, richness of substance, and Europe was satisfying this instinct. Pale and colorless herself, mentally perhaps anaemic or at least lethargic, she discovered in herself a passion for color and richness. Certain formless dreams about life began to haunt her mind--vague desires of warmth and color and emotion. Thus Paris was developing the latent possibilities of sensuousness in this pale offshoot of Puritanism. XVII The winter had passed agreeably and rapidly for Adelle. But London did not please her because Miss Comstock insisted upon a rather rigorous course of museums and churches and show places, which always fatigued and bored Adelle. She was also taken to garden parties where she was expected to talk, and that was the last thing Adelle liked doing. Whatever expressive reaction to life she had could never be put into words for the casual comer. She would stand helpless before the most persistent man, seeking a means of escape, and as men are rarely persistent or patient with a dumb girl she stood alone much of the time in spite of her reputation for wealth, which Miss Comstock carefully disseminated to prepare the way for her.