What she did was to stand helplessly gazing at Clark, with two or three bright tears on either cheek, her hands clenched, her eyes flashing.

She was going to say some wild thing; but she did not; her voice lodged fast in her throat.

She moved her lips, unable to make a sound.
Two of Clark's officers relieved the situation by coming up to get orders about some matter of town government, and Alice scarcely knew how she made her way home.

Every vein in her body was humming like a bee when she entered the house and flung herself into a chair.
She heard Madame Roussillon and Father Beret chatting in the kitchen, whence came a fragrance of broiling buffalo steak besprinkled with garlic.

It was Father Beret's favorite dish, wherefore his tongue ran freely--almost as freely as that of his hostess, and when he heard Alice come in, he called gayly to her through the kitchen door: "Come here, ma fille, and lend us old folks your appetite; nous avons une tranche a la Bordelaise!" "I am not hungry," she managed to say, "you can eat it without me." The old man's quick ears caught the quaver of trouble in her voice, much as she tried to hide it.