"I know that," I said, almost in a whisper.
"Yet you killed a man once, Tinman, so I've been told," he added musingly. "It doesn't seem possible, when one looks at you now, that you had hot blood in you to that extent. What did it feel like—to kill the man?"
"I have forgotten," I told him. Yet I thought then, as I knelt and looked up at him, that it might be possible that I should know what it felt like again, if he drove me too hard or goaded me too much. The shabby garment of my slavery was slipping off me, rag by rag, and leaving me something of what I had been before; I began to be dimly afraid of myself, and to what my inborn recklessness might drive me. For I, who had died once, had no fear of any consequences. I wondered if he thought of that, or remembered it.
He put an added torture upon me that night; he made me wait at table. I don't know how it was arranged that I should do that; I only know that at the last moment I was told that I must be there to hand the dishes—above all, to stand behind his chair, and wait upon him specially. And so I stood in that room where I had once been a guest, and waited upon him and the others humbly enough.
At one end of the table sat Lucas Savell, with his trembling hands fluttering about his plate and his glass; at the other end—defiant, intolerant, insolent,—sat Murray Olivant, talking loudly, and generally dominating the occasion. At one side of the table, at his right hand, sat Barbara, and next to her the man Dawkins—a man who may best be described as one having a perpetual smile. He even seemed to smile as he ate; the most commonplace remark addressed to him was met always with that smile, which seemed indeed a part of the man. It was a smile that became absolutely slavish whenever Murray Olivant threw a word to him; but it was a veiled insolence when Lucas Savell ventured a remark.
On the other side of the table young Arnold Millard was seated, watching the girl. I saw ghosts again then, when I saw Barbara with eyes downcast, and when I watched the boy's hungry glances at her; I—the servant who waited, and was unknown in that house save to one man—saw myself watching hopelessly enough the Barbara who was dead; my heart ached for the boy, as it had ached years before for poor Charlie Avaline.
The insolence of Olivant grew as the meal progressed. I saw him once stretch out his arm, and lay a hand strongly on the hand of the girl as it rested on the table. "Now, my pretty Barbara," he said, "let's have a word from you. You shouldn't be dumb at your father's table."
"Is it my father's table?" she asked him, as she raised her white face for a moment to his.
"Oh, don't let's talk business, for the Lord's sake!" he exclaimed. "At least, you might try to cheer our friend opposite here," he went on, indicating the boy; "he's as glum as you are. What's the matter, Arnold?—are you in love?"
"I should scarcely talk about it, if I were," replied the boy, with a glance at Olivant, and another at the imprisoned hand of the girl.