“Stop right thar, Bill; you can’t reach out an’ take poun’ cake from an angel an’ me not be in it!”
In the roar of this sally they all thronged round her to get some of that cake from an angel. She was passing around among them when someone seized her by the shoulder and brought her about face with:
“Come, fair waitress; forget not your humbler friends.”
And she stood facing Trevellian and General Jackson, who had thus called her. Her heart pounded, the color, despite her efforts at calmness, left her cheeks; her knees trembled and she almost dropped the waiter in his hands. She saw his agitated but reserved bearing, his hand going up nervously to his hat, and in her confusion she pushed forward her cake:
“Please have some.”
“I thank you, madam,” he replied as indifferently as if she were an unknown person to him and he reached out to take it from the tray. But two slices were uncut, and in her effort to help him her hand touched his and she felt the hot blood surge in her cheeks. Looking up she met his eyes, resigned, sad, but hotly determined in the old flash that dared all, hoped all and was afraid of nothing.
She read a thousand things in that brief look, while her own heart all but burst within her and her knees trembled in feminine weakness.
And that which she read above all else was that he had put her out of his life.
Indignant—hurt—crushed by the look, her pride stirred to madness with herself and the world, with fierce hatred of herself that she should care at all, she pushed madly into the crowd and away. Then she heard the General calling her impatiently: