antically on to the top step against the front
door, and rushed down the steps again and down the lane. In a minute
she was overtaking a man.

"Louis!" she cried.

From the car she had seen the incredible vision of Louis walking down
the lane from the house. He and John's Ernest had not noticed each
other, nor had Louis noticed that his wife was in the car.

Louis stopped now and looked back, hesitant.

There he was, with his plastered, pale face all streaked with
greyish-white lines! Really Rachel had difficulty in believing her
eyes. She had left him in bed, weak, broken; and he was there in the
road fully dressed for the town and making for the town--a dreadful
sight, but indubitably moving unaided on his own legs. It was simply
monstrous! Fury leaped up in her. She had never heard of anything more
monstrous. The thing was an absolute outrage on her nursing of him.

"Are you stark, staring mad?" she demanded.

He stood weakly regarding her. It was clear that he was already very
enfeebled by his fantastic exertions.

"I wonder how much farther you would have gone without falling!" she
said. "I'll thank you to come back this very instant!... This very
instant!"

He had no strength to withstand her impetuous anger. His lower lip
fell. He obeyed with some inarticulate words.

"And I should like to know what Mrs. Tams was doing!" said Rachel.

She neither guessed nor cared what was the intention of Louis'
shocking, impossible escapade. She grasped his arm firmly. In ten
minutes he was in bed again, under control, and Rachel was venting
herself on Mrs. Tams, who took oath that she had been utterly unaware
of the master's departure from the house.

CHAPTER XV

THE CHANGED MAN

I

Exactly a week passed, and Easter had come, before Rachel could set
out upon an enterprise which she both longed and hated to perform. In
the meantime the situation in the house remained stationary, except
that after a relapse Louis' condition had gradually improved. She
nursed him; he permitted himself to be nursed; she slept near him
every night; no scene of irritation passed between them. But nothing
was explained; even the fact that Rachel on the Saturday morning
had overtaken Louis instead of meeting him--a detail which in secret
considerably puzzled Louis, since it implied that his wife had been
in the house when he left it--even this was not explained; as for the
motor-car, Louis, absorbed, had scarcely noticed it,