get
hold of him. I _must_!"

But when the brief fury of longing was exhausted she would ask: "How
can I get hold of him? Where is he?" Then more forcibly: "What am I to
do first? Yes, what ought I to do? What is wisest? He little guesses
that he is killing me. If he had guessed, he wouldn't have done it.
But nothing will kill me! I am as strong as a horse. I shall live for
ages. There's the worst of it all!... And it's no use asking what I
ought to do, either, because nothing, nothing, nothing would induce me
to run after him, even if I knew where to run to! I would die first. I
would live for a hundred years in torture first. That's positive."

The hands of the clock, instead of moving slowly, seemed to progress
at a prodigious rate. Mrs. Tams came in--

"Shall I lay mester's supper, ma'am?"

The idea of laying supper for the master had naturally not occurred to
Rachel.

"Yes, please."

When the supper was laid upon one half of the table, the sight of it
almost persuaded Rachel that Louis would be bound to come--as though
the waiting supper must mysteriously magnetize him out of the world
beyond into the intimacy of the parlour.

And she thought, as she strove for the hundredth time to recall the
phrases of the letter--

"'Perfectly satisfactory explanation!' suppose he _has_ got a
perfectly satisfactory explanation! He must have. He must have. If
only he has, everything would be all right. I'd apologize. I'd almost
go on my knees to him.... And he was so ill all the time, too!... But
he's gone. It's too late now for the explanation. Still, as soon as I
hear from him, I shall write and ask him for it."

And in her mind she began to compose a wondrous letter to him--a
letter that should preserve her own dignity while salving his, a
letter that should overwhelm him with esteem for her.

She rang the bell. "Don't sit up, Mrs. Tams."

And when she had satisfied herself that Mrs. Tams with unwilling
obedience had retired upstairs, she began to walk madly about
the parlour (which had an appearance at once very strange and
distressingly familiar), and to whisper plaintively, and raging, and
plaintively again: "I must get him back. I cannot bear this. It is too
much for me. I _must_ get him back. It's all my fault!" and then
dropped on the Chesterfield in a collapse, moaning: "No. It's no use
now."

And then she fancied that she heard the gate creak, and a latch-key
fumbling into the keyhole of the front door