strain.

Then he said, "I say, Rachel."

He was too ill to call her "Louise."

"I shall make some tea soon," she answered.

He went on: "You remember about that missing money--I mean before
auntie died. You remember--"

"Don't talk about that, dear," she interrupted him eagerly. "Why
should you bother about that now?"

In one instant those apparently exhaustless reserves of moral force
seemed to have ebbed away. She had imagined herself equal to any
contingency, and now there loomed a contingency which made her quail.

"I've got to talk about that," he said in his weak and desperate
voice. His bruised head was hollowed into the pillow, and he stared
monotonously at the ceiling, upon which the paper screen of the gas
threw a great trembling shadow. "That's why I wakened you. You don't
know what the inside of my brain's like.... Why did you say to them
you found the scullery door open that night? You know perfectly well
it wasn't open."

She could scarcely speak.

"I--I--Louis don't talk about that now. You're too ill," she implored.

"I know why you said it."

"Be quiet!" she said sharply, and her voice broke.

But he continued in the same tone--

"You made up that tale about the scullery door because you guessed
I'd collared the money and you wanted to save me from being suspected.
Well, I did collar the money! Now I've told you!"

She burst into a sob, and her head dropped on to his body.

"Louis!" she cried passionately, amid her sobs. "Why ever did you tell
me? You've ruined everything now. Everything!"

"I can't help that," said Louis, with a sort of obstinate and defiant
weariness. "It was on my mind, and I just had to tell you. You don't
seem to understand that I'm dying."

Rachel jumped up and sprang away from the bed.

"Of course you're not dying!" she reproached him. "How can you imagine
such things?"

Her heart suddenly hardened against him--against his white-bandaged
head and face, against his feeble voice of a beaten martyr. It seemed
to her disgraceful that he, a strong male creature, should be lying
there damaged, helpless, and under the foolish delusion that he was
dying. She recalled with bitter gusto the tone in which the doctor had
said, "He's no more dying than I am!" All her fears that the doctor
might be wrong had vanished away. She now resented her husband's
illness; as a nurse, when danger is over, will resent a patient's long
convalescence, somehow charging it to him as