he contrary was the case. Nobody could have guessed
from his features that he was calculating and recalculating
the chances of immediate imprisonment, and that each successive
calculation disagreed with the previous one; at one moment the chances
were less than one in a hundred, less than one in a million;
at another they increased and multiplied themselves into tragic
certainty.

When Rachel heard him in the lobby her sudden tears were tears of joy
and deliverance. She did not try to restrain them. As she stole back
to her chair she ignored all her reasonings against him, and lived
only in the fact that he had returned. And she was triumphant. She
thought: "Now that he is in the house, he is mine. I have him. He
cannot escape me. In a caress I shall cancel all the past since his
accident. So long as I can hold him I don't care." Her soul dissolved
in softness towards him; even the body seemed to melt also, till,
instead of being a strong, sturdy girl, she was a living tentacular
endearment and naught else.

But when, with disconcerting quickness, he came into the room, she
hardened again in spite of herself. She simply could not display her
feelings. Upbringing, habit, environment were too much for her, and
spontaneity was checked. Had she been alone with a dog she would have
spent herself passionately on the dog, imaginatively transforming the
dog into Louis; but the sight of Louis in person congealed her, so
that she became a hard mass with just a tiny core of fire somewhere
within.

"Why cannot I jump up and fall on his neck?" she asked herself
angrily. But she could not.

She controlled her tears, and began to argue mentally whether Louis
had come home because he could not keep away from her, or for base
purposes of his own. She was conscious of a desire to greet him
sarcastically with the remark, "So you've come back, after all!" It
was a wilful, insensate desire; but there it was. She shut her lips on
it, not without difficulty.

"I've kept some supper for you," she said, with averted head. She
wanted to make her voice kind, but it would not obey her. It was
neither kind nor unkind. There were tears in it, however.

They did not look at each other.

"Why did you keep supper for me?" he mumbled.

"I thought you might find you weren't well enough to travel," she
answered thoughtfully, with her face still bent over the work which
she was spoiling with every clumsy, feverish stitch.

This surprising and