ight_ have died, and where would Rachel
have been then?... Was it not amazing that a young wife who had just
escaped widowhood so narrowly could behave to a husband, a seriously
sick husband, as Rachel was behaving to him?

He wished that he had not used the word "collar" in confessing to
Rachel. It was equal to "steal." Its significance was undebatable.
Yes, "collar" was a grave error of phrasing.

"I'm about done with this basin thing," he said, with all possible
dignity, and asked for brushes of various sorts for the completion of
his toilet. She served him slowly, coolly. Her intention was clear
to act as a capable but frigid nurse--not as a wife. He saw that she
thought herself the wife of a thief, and that she was determined not
to be the wife of a thief. He could not bear it. The situation must be
changed immediately, because his pride was bleeding to death.

"I say," he began, when she had taken away the towel and his
tooth-powder.

"What?" Her tone challenged him.

"You wouldn't let me finish last night. I just wanted to tell you that
I didn't--"

"I've no wish to hear another word." She stopped him, precisely as she
had stopped him in the night. She was at the washstand.

"I should be obliged if you'd look at me when you speak to me," he
reproached her manners. "It's only polite."

She turned to him with face flaming. They were both aware that his
deportment was better than hers; and he perceived that the correction
had abraded her susceptibility.

"I'll look at you all right," she answered, curtly and rather loudly.

He adopted a superior attitude.

"Of course I'm ill and weak," he said, "but even if I am I suppose I'm
entitled to some consideration." He lay back on the pillow.

"I can't help your being ill," she answered. "It's not my fault. And
if you're so ill and weak as all that, it seems to me the best thing
you can do is to be quiet and not to talk, especially about--about
that!"

"Well, perhaps you'll let me be the best judge of what I ought to
talk about. Anyhow, I'm going to talk about it, and you're going to
listen."

"I'm not."

"I say you're going to listen," he insisted, turning on his side
towards her. "And why not? Why, what on earth did I say last night,
after all, I should like to know?"

"You said you'd taken the other part of the money of Mrs.
Maldon's--that's what you said. You thought you were dying, and so you
told me."

"That's just what I want to explain. I'm g