“Sha’n’t I get you some coffee and rolls—same as day before yesterday?”
“Yass.” He did not know what she said. His heart had stopped beating; now it began again at a gallop. He turned red. He could see the handkerchief that was wadded into his outer breast-pocket jar in time with the heavy thump, thump, thump beneath it. The waitress staid an awful time. At last she came.
“I waited,” she sweetly said, “to get hot ones.” He drew the refreshments towards him mechanically. The mere smell of food made him sick. It seemed impossible that he should eat it. She leaned over him lovingly and asked, as if referring to the attitude, “Would you like any thing more?—something sweet?” His flesh crawled. He bent over his plate, shook his head, and stirred his coffee without having put any thing into it.
She tripped away, and he drew a breath of momentary relief, leaned back in his chair, and warily passed his eyes around to see if there was anybody who was not looking at him and waiting for him to begin to eat.
Ages afterward—to speak with Claude’s feelings—he rose, took up his check, and went to the desk. The cashier leaned forward and said with soft blitheness:
“They’re here. They’re up-stairs now.”
Claude answered never a word. He paid his check. As he waited for change, he cast another glance over the various groups at the tables. All were strangers. Then he went out. On the single sidewalk step he halted, and red and blind with mortification, turned again into the place; he had left his hat. With one magnificent effort at dignity and unconcern he went to the rack, took down the hat, and as he lowered it towards his head cast a last look down the room, and—there stood Marguerite. She had entered just in time, it seemed to him, but just too late, in fact, to see and understand the blunder. Oh, agony! They bowed to each other with majestic faintness, and then each from each was gone. The girl at the desk saw it and was dumb.