For the first time her eyes left the sky, and as she looked down, the consciousness of her situation entered into her strained bright eyes. Her composure was lost in a birdlike, palpitating movement of terror.
"I—I am going as far as the Square, Mr. Starr," she replied, as if she were repeating by rote a phrase in a strange tongue.
At my approach the ridicule, somewhat subdued by the sense of her helplessness, broke suddenly loose. Bending over I offered her my arm, my head still uncovered. As the hand holding the white flag drooped from exhaustion, I took it, with the banner, into my own.
"Then I'll go with you, Miss Matoaca," I responded.
We started on, took a few measured paces in the line of march, and then her strength failing her, she sank back, with a pathetic moan of weariness, into my arms. Lifting her like a child I carried her out of the street and up the steps into the General's office. Turning at a touch as I entered the room, I saw that Sally was at my side.
"I've sent for Dr. Theophilus," she said. "There, put her on the lounge."
Kneeling on the floor she began bathing Miss Matoaca's forehead with water which somebody had brought. The General, his eyes very red and bloodshot and his lower lip fallen into a senile droop, was trying vainly to fan her with his pocket-handkerchief.
"We have always feared this would happen," said Sally, very quiet and pale.
"She was talking to me yesterday about her heart," returned the General, "and I didn't know what she meant."
He bent over, fanning her more violently with his silk handkerchief, and on the lounge beneath, Miss Matoaca lay, very prim and maidenly, with her skirt folded modestly about her ankles.