awake."

Mrs. Tams saw the stains on Rachel's cheeks, but she could not mention
them. Rachel had an impulse to fall on Mrs. Tams' enormous breast and
weep. But the conventions of domesticity were far too strong for
her also. Mrs. Tams was the general servant; what Louis occasionally
called "the esteemed skivvy." Once Mrs. Tams had been wife, mother,
grandmother, victim, slave, diplomatist, serpent, heroine. Once she
had bent from morn till night under the terrific weight of a million
perils and responsibilities. Once she could never be sure of her next
meal, or the roof over her head, or her skin, or even her bones. Once
she had been the last resource and refuge not merely of a house, but
of half a street, and she had had a remedy for every ill, a balm
for every wound. But now she was safe, out of harm's way. She had no
responsibilities worth a rap. She had everything an old woman ought
to desire. And yet the silly old woman felt a lack, as she impotently
watched Rachel leave the kitchen. Perhaps she wanted her eye blacked,
or the menace of a policeman, or a child down with diphtheria, to
remind her that the world revolved.

CHAPTER XIII

DEAD-LOCK

I

Louis had wakened up a few minutes before Rachel returned to
the bedroom from that most wonderfully conscientious spell of
silver-cleaning. He was relieved to find himself alone. He was ill,
perhaps very ill, but he felt unquestionably better than in the night.
He was delivered from the appalling fear of death which had tortured
and frightened him, and his thankfulness was intense; and yet at the
same time he was aware of a sort of heroical sentimental regret that
he was not, after all, dead; he would almost have preferred to die
with grandeur, young, unfortunate, wept for by an inconsolable
wife doomed to everlasting widowhood. He was ashamed of his bodily
improvement, which rendered him uncomfortably self-conscious, for
he had behaved as though dying when, as the event proved, he was not
dying.

When Rachel came in, this self-consciousness grew terrible. And in his
weakness, his constraint, his febrile perturbation which completely
destroyed presence of mind, he feebly remarked--

"Did any one call yesterday to ask how I was?"

As soon as he had said it he knew that it was inept, and quite
unsuitable to the role which he ought to play.

Rachel had gone straight to the dressing-table, apparently ignoring
him, though she could not possibly have faile