ng at doors."

"Oh! There you are," he said, with an effort at ordinariness of
demeanour. "Just go in to Mrs. Fores, will you? Something's the matter
with her. It's nothing, but I have to go out."

Mrs. Tams answered, trembling: "Nay, mester, I'm none going to
interfere. I go into no parlour."

"But I tell you she's fainting."

"Ye'd happen better look after her yerself, Mr. Louis," said Mrs. Tams
in a queer voice.

"But don't you understand I've got to go out?"

He was astounded and most seriously disconcerted by Mrs. Tams's very
singular behaviour.

"If ye'll excuse me being so bold, sir," said Mrs. Tams, "ye ought
for be right well ashamed o' yeself. And that I'll say with my dying
breath."

She dropped on to the hard Windsor chair, and, lifting her apron,
began to whimper.

Louis could feel himself blushing.

"It seems to me you'd better look out for a fresh situation," he
remarked curtly, as he turned to leave the kitchen.

"Happen I had, mester," Mrs. Tams agreed sadly; and then with fire:
"But I go into no parlour. You get back to her, mester. Going out
again at this time o' night, and missis as her is! If you stop where a
husband ought for be, her'll soon mend, I warrant."

He went back, cursing all women, because he had no alternative but to
go back. He dared not do otherwise.... It was only a swoon. But was
it only a swoon? Suppose ...! He was afraid of public opinion; he
was afraid of Mrs. Tams's opinion. Mrs. Tams had pierced him. He went
back, dashing his hat on to the oak chest.

III

Rachel was lying on the hearth-rug, one arm stretched nonchalantly
over the fender and the hand close to the fire. Her face was whiter
than any face he had ever seen, living or dead. He shook; the
inanimate figure with the disarranged clothes and hair, prone and
deserted there in the solitude of the warm, familiar room, struck
terror into him. He bent down; he knelt down and drew the arm away
from the fire. He knew not in the least what was the proper thing to
do; and naturally the first impulse of his ignorance was to raise
her body from the ground. But she was so heavy, so appallingly inert,
that, fortunately, he could not do so, and he let her head subside
again.

Then he remembered that the proper thing to do in these cases was to
loosen the clothes round the neck; but he could not loosen her bodice
because it was fastened behind and the hooks were so difficult. He
jumped to the window and opened