Suddenly Madame Wachner held out her plate across the table, and L'Ami Fritz heaped it up with the oily salad.
Sylvia Bailey's plate was empty, but Monsieur Wachner did not seem to notice that his guest lacked anything. And at last, to her extreme astonishment, she suddenly saw him take up one of the two pieces of meat remaining on the dish, and, leaning across, drop it on his wife's plate. Then he helped himself to the last remaining morsel.
It was such a trifling thing really, and due of course to her host's singular absent-mindedness; yet, even so, taken in connection with both the Wachners' silence and odd manner, this lack of the commonest courtesy struck Sylvia with a kind of fear—with fear and with pain. She felt so hurt that the tears came into her eyes.
There was a long moment's pause—then,
"Do you not feel well," asked Madame Wachner harshly, "or are you grieving for the Comte de Virieu?"
Her voice had become guttural, full of coarse and cruel malice, and even as she spoke she went on eating voraciously.
Sylvia Bailey pushed her chair back, and rose to her feet.
"I should like to go home now," she said quietly, "for it is getting late,"—her voice shook a little. She was desperately afraid of disgracing herself by a childish outburst of tears. "I can make my way back quite well without Monsieur Wachner's escort."
She saw her host shrug his shoulders. He made a grimace at his wife; it expressed annoyance, nay, more, extreme disapproval.
Madame Wachner also got up. She wiped her mouth with her napkin, and then laid her hand on Sylvia's shoulder.