He was relieved to find himself alone. He was ill,
perhaps very ill, but he felt unquestionably better than in the night.
He was delivered from the appalling fear of death which had tortured
and frightened him, and his thankfulness was intense; and yet at the
same time he was aware of a sort of heroical sentimental regret that
he was not, after all, dead; he would almost have preferred to die
with grandeur, young, unfortunate, wept for by an inconsolable
wife doomed to everlasting widowhood. He was ashamed of his bodily
improvement, which rendered him uncomfortably self-conscious, for
he had behaved as though dying when, as the event proved, he was not
dying.
When Rachel came in, this self-consciousness grew terrible. And in his
weakness, his constraint, his febrile perturbation which completely
destroyed presence of mind, he feebly remarked--
"Did any one call yesterday to ask how I was?"
As soon as he had said it he knew that it was inept, and quite
unsuitable to the role which he ought to play.
Rachel had gone straight to the dressing-table, apparently ignoring
him, though she could not possibly have failed to notice that he was
awake. She turned sharply and gazed at him with a look of inimical
contempt that aggrieved and scarified him very acutely.
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