Shortly after ten o’clock she heard Warren run upstairs and into his room.  She could hear his voice at the telephone; he wanted the hospital—­Doctor Gregory wished to speak to Miss Moore.

Miss Moore?  Doctor Gregory would be there at eleven ... please have everything ready.  Miss Moore, who was a veteran nurse and a privileged character, asked some question as to the Albany case; Warren wearily answered that the patient had not rallied; it was too bad—­too bad.

Once it would have been Rachael’s delight to soothe him, to give him the strong coffee he needed before eleven o’clock, to ask about the poor Albany man.  Now she hardly heard him.  Beginning to tremble, she sat up, her heart beating fast.

“Warren!” she called in a shaken voice.

He came to her door immediately, and they faced each other, his perfunctory greeting arrested by her look.

“Warren,” said Rachael with a desperate effort at control, “I want you to tell me about—­about you and Magsie Clay.”

Instantly his face darkened.  He gazed back at her steadily, narrowing his eyes.

“What about it?” he asked sharply.

Rachael knew that she was growing angry against her passionate resolution to keep the conversation in her own hands.

“Magsie came to see me yesterday,” she said, panting.

Had she touched him?  She could not tell.  There was no wavering in his impassive face.

“What about it?” he asked again after a silence.

His wife pushed the rich, tumbled hair from her face with a wild gesture, as if she fought for air.

“What about it?” she echoed, in a constrained tone, still with that quickened shallow breath.  “Do you think it is customary for a girl to come to a man’s wife, and tell her that she cares for him?  Do you think it is customary for a man to have tea every day with a young actress who admits she is in love with him—­”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Warren said, his face a dull red.

“Do you mean to tell me that you don’t know that Margaret Clay cares for you,” Rachael asked in rising anger, “and that you have never told her you care for her—­that you and she have never talked about it, have never wished that you were free to belong to each other!”

“You will make yourself ill!” Warren said quietly, watching her.

His tone brought Rachael abruptly to her senses.  Fury and accusation were not her best defence.  With Warren calm and dignified she would only hurt her claim by this course.  In a second she was herself again, her breath grew normal, she straightened her hair, and with a brief shrug walked slowly from the room into her own sitting-room adjoining.  Following her, Warren found her looking down at the square from the window.

“If you are implying anything against Magsie, you are merely making yourself ridiculous, Rachael,” he said nervously.  “Neither Magsie nor I have forgotten your claim for a single instant.  If she came here and talked to you, she did so absolutely without my knowledge.”