The self-accuser and the self-depreciator in her grew so strong that Louis’ conduct soon became unexceptionable—­save for a minor point concerning a theft of some five hundred pounds odd from an old lady.  And as for herself, she, Rachel, was an over-righteous prig, an interfering person, a blundering fool of a woman, a cruel-hearted creature.  And Louis was just a poor, polite martyr who had had the misfortune to pick up certain bank-notes that were not his.

Then the tide of judgment would sweep back, and Rachel was the innocent, righteous martyr again, and Louis the villain.  But not for long.

She cried passionately within her brain:  “I must have him.  I must 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.”