The glasses clinked fitfully against the plates as she handled them; the knives jarred with one another.

And I stood by, trembling myself; and endured this strange kind of penance.
She signed to me at last to sit down; and she went herself, and stood in the garden doorway with her back to me.

I obeyed.

I sat down.

But though I had eaten nothing since the afternoon of the day before, I could not swallow.