"I'm afraid I have had almost enough of adventures. When I came back to live here I was very tired."
"Are you going to tell me?" said Helen, in an awed tone.
"Perhaps not everything. But you know I was born here, and my name was Ulic, and all that, till I was married. Mr. Mavering came to Hamilton when I was about your age, and I think he was looking for anything that would interest him, but not expecting it would interest him very long. He had a great deal of money then, but he has done all sorts of things with it, and I don't know that he has any now. I suppose he was engaged in what your uncle calls 'the pursuit of happiness,' and he seemed to be successful. He got so much amusement wherever he went, and his way of doing it was—some of it—expensive. But perhaps it cost me more than any one else, unless—but I don't know about that. He was very clever, and I thought him wonderful. I think he must have been a little extraordinary. I thought no one else had a lover who paid such compliments. He used to say, 'Life is a joke between God and the devil. You are a bright remark by the former, Rachel, and I am the latter's repartee.' He never tried to conceal anything about himself. Then we went adventuring. You see, my story turns on Jack's being so queer—at least, his coming to seems so to me. I couldn't like things and people that were evil and coarse, or like being always dragged into the danger of some kind of disgrace. You can't, if you have been taught to be scrupulous. But he did not seem to see differences between good and bad, and refined and coarse, or else he thought them petty differences. He liked almost anything except being dull. We went from place to place, and across the sea and back again. He was restless—and reckless. I think he was too reckless of me. Once we had a house at New Orleans, where the planters used to come and play cards, and there were queer women with very dark eyes, and some of the planters were quite old men. But one night one of the women killed a planter with a knife, on the stairs. Then we got out of a window on a back roof, and through alleys to the levee, and went up the river in the morning on a steamer. I don't know what it was all about—quite. But there were things that happened which I minded more than that. I used to be so tired, so afraid. Then I grew to be afraid of Jack, because I couldn't understand him, because whenever things were very black and horrible, or seemed so to me, he acted more amused and queer, as if it were all a kind of play in the theatre. And he did not grow worse through all this; he did not change at all; but I grew worse. I tried to be like him, but I couldn't. Of course, we knew a great many people, and sometimes were fashionable. Once in London we went to great balls and receptions. But Jack saw some Hindoo snake-charmers, and wanted to be one, and travel about in turbans and yellow cloth. I don't know why we didn't do that, but we came home soon after. And we quarrelled very miserably—that is, I did. Then the Ulics became excited about it. One night, or early in the morning, I woke up and heard some one very angry in the next room. Jack never became angry. It was another man. I don't know who it was. There was a struggle. I suppose Jack struck him, and he fell. I crept and opened the door. The window was open and Jack was dropping the man out of it into the area. Then he laughed to himself, and turned around and saw me." Mrs. Mavering's voice faltered, and she paused.
"It wasn't so much of an incident, only it was the last. After he left I began to shiver and sob, and I crept to the window and closed it. I thought he had killed him, but of course he hadn't. It was winter, and the snow was deep in the area. He dragged the man up the steps, held him by the collar against the railing, and brushed him and laughed. Then he took him away, holding him up by the arm. It was characteristic, for he never bore any person a grudge for any harm he may have done that person. Most people do. He doesn't bear me any grudge. I came back to Hamilton then.
"Forgive me for telling you my poor story. I thought when I began there might be something in it to tell you particularly, but I see there wasn't. And really it isn't much of a story, only a quantity of details.
"I suppose," she continued, slowly, after another pause, "that your uncle would class Jack with the half civilized, or belonging really to a past time, when everything was unsettled and everybody was adventurous. He calls Morgan Map a primary, or aboriginal. I suppose he would call Jack a secondary, or nomadic, and perhaps," with a little laugh, "he calls himself a tertiary. I wonder if there are any more degrees."
Helen sat very quietly, drooping her head, and did not smile. Without understanding, she felt as if a hand in the darkness had struck her, as if a vista had opened, and all along it were crouching melancholy shapes and strange fears with faces hidden.
When Thaddeus came back he stood a moment in the doorway, and smiled with wrinkled cheeks.
"You look," he said, "like Israel by the waters of Babylon."