a sin.

"I found the other half of the notes under the chair on the--" Louis
began again.

"Please!" she objected with quick resounding violence, and raised a
hand.

He said--

"You must listen."

She answered, passionately--

"I won't listen! I won't listen! And if you don't stop I shall leave
the room! I shall leave you all alone!... Yes, I shall!" She moved a
little towards the door.

His gloomy and shifty glance followed her, and there was a short
silence.

"You needn't work yourself up into such a state," murmured Louis at
length. "But I _should_ like to know whether the scullery door
was open or not, when you came downstairs that night?"

Rachel's glance fell. She blushed. The tears had ceased to drop from
her eyes. She made no answer.

"You see," said Louis, with a half-sneering triumph, "I knew jolly
well it wasn't open. So did old Batchgrew know, too."

She shut her lips together, went decisively to the mantelpiece, struck
a match, and lit the stove. Like the patent gas-burner downstairs,
the stove often had to be extinguished after the first lighting and
lighted again with a second and different kind of explosion. And so
it was now. She flung down the match pettishly into the hearth.
Throughout the whole operation she sniffed convulsively, to prevent a
new fit of sobbing. Her peignoir being very near to the purple-green
flames that folded themselves round the asbestos of the stove, she
reflected that the material was probably inflammable, and that a
careless movement might cause it to be ignited. "And not a bad thing,
either!" she said to herself. Then, without looking at all towards
the bed, she lit the spirit-lamp in order to make tea. The sniffing
continued, as she went through the familiar procedure.

The water would not boil, demonstrating the cruel truth of proverbs.
She sat down and, gazing into the stove, now a rich red, ignored the
saucepan. The dry heat from the stove burnt her ankles and face. Not
a sound from the small saucepan, balanced on its tripod over the
wavering blue flame of the spirit-lamp! At last, uncontrollably
impatient, she lifted the teapot off the inverted lid of the saucepan,
where she had placed it to warm, and peered into the saucepan. The
water was cheerfully boiling! She made the tea, and sat down again to
wait until it should be infused. She had to judge the minutes as well
as she could, for she would not go across to the night-table to look
at Louis' watch;