Throughout this long speech he had walked about Lilly in a semicircle, with one hand thrust in the belt of his Norfolk jacket, making short, jerky steps, which forcefully expressed his righteous indignation.
Lilly sat on the sofa stiffly upright, mechanically turning her head after him now to the right, now to the left, and staring at him with great, uncomprehending eyes.
When he stopped speaking, he drew a cigarette from the case and energetically beat off the superfluous tobacco with the index finger of his left hand.
Lilly rose in all her height, leaving the sofa and the table next to the sofa far below her.
"Listen, Walter," she said, "from this moment everything between us is at an end."
"Oh, inwardly, too!" He made a little grimace. "With you that probably means if you have something in your stomach."
When Lilly saw her love so ridiculed and mutilated, she could no longer restrain herself. With an outcry she ran from the sofa, and hid her face--anywhere at all--on the wall next to the window.
"Get away from the window!" she heard him hiss.
In the extremity of his fright he took to pleading.
"Just come away from the window," he said. "It was all mere twaddle. I simply wanted to make you laugh again, nothing more. Please come away from the window."
To crawl off somewhere! To crawl away and hide herself and all her shame.
She flung him off, wrestled with him, clawed at his neck--
A whistling, a clash and clatter--shivers of glass flew over their heads, and a long, dark something, like the shaft of a lance, sped past them, knocked against something, rebounded, and fell at their feet.
The same instant Lilly felt a rush of cold air on her forehead, which aroused her from the stupefaction of surprise.
One of the two upper window panes had been broken.
No living creature was to be seen. But the balcony door yonder, which had been closed a moment before, now showed a dark opening, and was swinging shut.
"A narrow escape," murmured Walter, and stooped to pick up the mysterious thing from the floor, while the fragments of glass gritted beneath his feet.
"A mercy he didn't happen to have his fowling-piece at hand," said Walter, "else we'd be riddled into sieves."
With the back of his hand he wiped away the sweat of fright standing on his forehead in bright beads.