At this moment Kreisler sprang up. His head was thrust forward, his hands were in rear, partly clenched and partly facilitating his passage between the tables by hemming in his coat tails. The smooth round cloth at the top of his back, his smooth head above that with no back to it, struck Tarr in the way a momentary smell of sweat would. Germans had no backs to them, or were like polished pebbles behind. Tarr mechanically moved his hand upwards from his lap to the edge of the table on the way to ward off a blow. He was dazed by all the details of this meeting, and the peculiar miscarriage of his plan. But Kreisler brushed past him with the swift deftness of a person absorbed with some strong movement of the will. The next moment Tarr saw the party of young men he had been observing in a sort of noisy blur of commotion. Kreisler was in among them, working on something in their midst. There were two blows—smack—smack; an interval between them. He could not see who had received them. Tarr then heard Kreisler shout in German: “For the _second_ time to-day! Is your courage so slow that I must do it a _third_ time?” Conversation had stopped in the café and everybody was standing. The companions of the man smacked, too, had risen in their seats. They were expostulating in three languages. Several were mixed up with the _garçons_, who had rushed up to do their usual police work on such occasions. Over Kreisler’s shoulder, his eyes carbonized to a black sweetness, his cheeks a sweet sallow-white, with a red mark where Kreisler’s hand had been, Tarr saw the man his German friend had singled out. He had sprung towards the aggressor, but by that time Kreisler had been seized from behind and was being hustled towards the door. The blow seemed to hurt his vanity so much that he was standing half-conscious till the pain abated. He seemed to wish to brush the blow off, but was too vain to raise his hands to his cheek. It was left there like a scorching compress. His friends, Kreisler wrenched away from them, were left standing in a group, in attitudes more or less of violent expostulation and excitement. Kreisler receded in the midst of a band of waiters towards the door. He was resisting and protesting, but not too much to retard his quick exit. The _garçons_ had the self-conscious unconcern of civilian braves. The young man attacked and his friends were explaining what had happened, next, to the manager of the café. A _garçon_ brought in a card on a plate. There was a new outburst of protest and contempt from the others. The plate was presented to the individual chiefly concerned, who brushed it away, as though he had been refusing a dish that a waiter was, for some reason, pressing upon him. Then suddenly he took up the card, tore it in half, and again waived away the persistent platter. The _garçon_ looked at the manager of the café and then returned to the door. * * * * *