"I've always thought of myself as like one of those poor Asiatic
hornbills," she was saying. "It seems to me that all my life long some
one has walled me up in a nice, safe nest and fed me through my longings
and desires. I cannot get to life first hand. I'm not stupid exactly, but
I am terribly limited." Helen paused, then went on more rapidly: "First
it was my father. He and I travelled after mother's death continually,
and alone. He educated me and interpreted life for me; he was a man of
the world, I suppose, but he managed to keep me most unworldly wise. Of
course I knew, abstractly, the lights and shadows; but I wonder if you
will believe me when I tell you that, until after my marriage, I never
suspected that--that certain codes of honour and dishonour had place in
the lives of those closest to me? The evil of the world was classified
and pigeon-holed for me. I even had ambition to get out of my walled-up
condition and help some mystical people, detached and far from my safe,
clean corner. Father left me more money than was good for any young
woman, and my simple impulse was to use it properly."

"You were very young?" Ledyard interrupted.

Helen Travers shook her head.

"Not very. I was twenty-four when I married. I had never had but one
intimate friend in my life, and to her I went at my father's death. It
was her brother I married--John Travers."

Ledyard nodded his head; he knew of the Traverses--the older generation.

"This thing concerning Dick occurred some three or four years before my
marriage. My wedding was a very quiet one; it was not reported, and that