selected they were--the vulgarities of simplicity rather than of
coarseness. And while he talked he moved his hands unusually for a man
of northern blood, revealing the sinister thumb and forefinger, which
to Fred Starratt grew to be a symbol of his guest's rough-hewn power.
Hilmer was full of raw-boned stories of the sea and he had the
seafarer's trick of vivid speech. Even Helen Starratt was absorbed ...
a thing unusual for her. At least in her husband's hearing she always
disclaimed any interest in the brutalities. She never read about
murders or the sweaty stories in the human-interest columns of the
paper or the unpleasant fictioning of realists. Her excuse was the
threadbare one that a trivial environment always calls forth, "There
are enough unpleasant things in life without reading about them!"

The unpleasant things in Helen Starratt's life didn't go very far
beyond half-tipsy maids and impertinent butcher boys.

Hilmer's experiences were not quite in the line of drawing-room
anecdotes, and Starratt had seen the time when his wife would have
recoiled from them with the disdainful grace of a feline shaking
unwelcome moisture from its paws. But to-night she drew her dark
eyebrows together tensely and let her thin, vivid lips part with frank
eagerness. Her interest flamed her with a new quality. Fred Starratt
had always known that his wife was attractive; he would not have
married her otherwise; but, as she leaned forward upon the arm of her
chair, resting her elbows upon an orange satin pillow, he saw that she
was handsome. And, somehow, the realization vaguely disturbed him.

Hilmer's stories of prosperity were not so moving. From a penniless
emigrant in New York until he had achieved the distinction of being
one of the leading shipbuilders of the Pacific coast, his narrative