"Be quiet!" she said sharply, and her voice broke.
But he continued in the same tone—
"You made up that tale about the scullery door because you guessed I'd collared the money and you wanted to save me from being suspected. Well, I did collar the money! Now I've told you!"
She burst into a sob, and her head dropped on to his body.
"Louis!" she cried passionately, amid her sobs. "Why ever did you tell me? You've ruined everything now. Everything!"
"I can't help that," said Louis, with a sort of obstinate and defiant weariness. "It was on my mind, and I just had to tell you. You don't seem to understand that I'm dying."
Rachel jumped up and sprang away from the bed.
"Of course you're not dying!" she reproached him. "How can you imagine such things?"
Her heart suddenly hardened against him—against his white-bandaged head and face, against his feeble voice of a beaten martyr. It seemed to her disgraceful that he, a strong male creature, should be lying there damaged, helpless, and under the foolish delusion that he was dying. She recalled with bitter gusto the tone in which the doctor had said, "He's no more dying than I am!" All her fears that the doctor might be wrong had vanished away. She now resented her husband's illness; as a nurse, when danger is over, will resent a patient's long convalescence, somehow charging it to him as a sin.
"I found the other half of the notes under the chair on the—" Louis began again.