"Well, wasn't I always ready to be your self-sacrificing comrade? Haven't I even sacrificed my loyalty to my old colonel for your sake--the man I honoured and reverenced, who you may say picked me out of the gutter? That's no trifle, I can assure you. Do you imagine it didn't go against the grain? Do you imagine I didn't get awfully depressed? And then night after night to have nothing to do but fool round with a dog that stinks; for that beast Tommy does, you know. Can a man be blamed in the circumstance for trying to deaden his feelings, to still the qualms of his love-anguish? How you can expect that I shouldn't entirely amazes me. We speak different languages, my child, a yawning chasm divides our two natures. You actually don't mind risking both our lives for the sake of a petty grievance. I don't belong, as a rule, to the prudes; but the devil knows what I wouldn't give to get you out of this room." During this lengthy oration he had walked round Lilly with one hand in the belt of his shooting-jacket, his short, jerky steps expressing his indignant consternation. She for her part sat rigidly erect, turning her head, with great despairing eyes, towards him mechanically, first to the right, and then to the left. When he had finished he took a new cigarette from a case and energetically brushed off the superfluous tobacco with his forefinger. She rose to her full height, leaving the sofa and sofa-table a long way below her. "Listen, Walter," she said; "from this moment all is at an end between us." "Wasn't it so long ago?" he asked. "I mean inwardly too," she explained. "Oh, indeed ... inwardly!" He made a grimace. "That means, I suppose, in your case, when you are sick and tired of one." When she saw her love so vulgarly derided and jeered at, her self-restraint completely collapsed. With a loud moan she ran behind the sofa and hid her face in the wall. "Don't go near the window," she heard him hiss, as he ground his teeth. But what did she care about the window? In his distraught anxiety he took to pleading. "Do come away from the window," he entreated. "I was only rotting. I wanted to make you laugh again; nothing else, I swear. Please come away from the window." She did not stir. She wanted to crawl into something--crawl away with her shame. Then she felt herself roughly seized by his hands. So it had come to that, too! She was to be beaten by him! She struck at him, wrestled with him, dug her fingers into his throat, and then suddenly ... A whizzing, clashing, and clattering, and splinters of glass flew over their heads; and an oblong, dark, slender thing glanced by them, like the shaft of a lance, hit something, rebounded, and lay at their feet. At the same time she felt a gust of wind blow on her forehead and awaken her from the stupefaction of the moment.