In the larger life of cities, Alexander Minchin was no longer the idle and good-humored cavalier to whom Rachel had learned to look for unfailing consideration at sea.  The illustrative incidents may be omitted; but here he gambled, there he drank; and in his cups every virtue dissolved.  Rachel’s pride did not mend matters; she was a thought too ready with her resentment; of this, however, she was herself aware, and would forgive the more freely because there was often some obvious fault on her side before all was said.  Quarrels of infinite bitterness were thus patched up, and the end indefinitely delayed.

In the meantime, tired of travelling, and impoverished by the husband’s follies, the hapless couple returned to London, where a pure fluke with some mining shares introduced Minchin to finer gambling than he had found abroad.  The man was bitten.  There was a fortune waiting for special knowledge and a little ready cash; and Alexander Minchin settled down to make it, taking for the nonce a furnished house in a modest neighborhood.  And here it was that the quarrelling continued to its culmination in the scene just ended.

“Not another day,” said Rachel, “nor a night—­if I can be ready before morning!”

Being still a woman with some strength of purpose, Mrs. Minchin did not stop at idle words.  The interval between the slamming of doors below and another noise at the top of the house was not one of many minutes.  The other noise was made by Rachel and her empty trunk upon the loftiest and the narrowest flight of stairs; one of the maids opened their door an inch.

“I am sorry if I disturbed you,” their mistress said.  “These stairs are so very narrow.  No, thank you, I can manage quite well.”  And they heard her about until they slept.

It was no light task to which Rachel had set her hand; she was going back to Australia by the first boat, and her packing must be done that night.  Her resolve only hardened as her spirit cooled.  The sooner her departure, the less his opposition; let her delay, and the callousness of the passing brute might give place to the tyranny of the normal man.  But she was going, whether or no; not another day—­though she would doubtless see its dawn.  It was the month of September.  And she was not going to fly empty-handed, nor fly at all; she was going deliberately away, with a trunk containing all that she should want upon the voyage.  The selection was not too easily made.  In his better moods the creature had been lavish enough; and more than once did Rachel snatch from drawer or wardrobe that which remained some moments in her hand, while the incidents of purchase and the first joys of possession, to one who had possessed so little in her life, came back to her with a certain poignancy.