She was nurse now, and he her patient. She began to undress him, and then stopped and hurried down to the bathroom, where Mr. Earlforward's weekly clean grey flannel shirt lay newly ironed. She stole the shirt. Then, having secured her door again, she finished undressing the patient, taking every stitch off him, and rubbing him dry with her towel, and rubbed the ends of his hair nearly dry, and got the shirt over his shoulders, and turned down the bed, and lifted him into her bed, and covered him up, and threw on the bedclothes the very garments which in the early morning she had used for Mrs. Earlforward's comforting. There he lay in her bed, and nobody on earth except those two knew that he was in her room with the door locked to keep out the whole world. It was a wondrous, palpitating secret, the most wonderful secret that any woman had ever enjoyed in the history of love. She knelt by the bed and kissed him again and again. He smiled; then a spasm of pain passed over his face.
"What's the matter with you, Joe, darling? What is it you've got?" she asked gently, made blissful by his smile and alarmed by his evident discomfort.
"I ache—all over me. I'm cold." His voice was extremely weak.
She ran over various diseases in her mind and thought of rheumatic fever. She had not the least idea what rheumatic fever was, but she had always understood that it was exceedingly serious.
"I shall light a fire," she said, announcing this terrific decision as though it was quite an everyday matter for a servant, having put a "follower" in her own room, to light a fire for him and burn up her employer's precious coal.
On the way downstairs to steal a bucket of coal she thought: "I'd better just make sure of the old gentleman," and went into the principal bedroom and turned on the light. Mr. Earlforward seemed to be neither worse nor better. She was reassured as to him. He looked at her intently, but could not see through her body the glowing secret in her heart.
"You all right, sir?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Going to bed?"
"Oh, no! Not yet!" she smiled easily. "Not for a long time."