“Do you mean to say you don't MEAN what you've been saying?” said Levison, now really looking angry.
“Why, I'll tell you the real truth,” said Lilly. “I think every man is a sacred and holy individual, NEVER to be violated; I think there is only one thing I hate to the verge of madness, and that is BULLYING. To see any living creature BULLIED, in any way, almost makes a murderer of me. That is true. Do you believe it—?”
“Yes,” said Levison unwillingly. “That may be true as well. You have no doubt, like most of us, got a complex nature which—”
C R A S H!
There intervened one awful minute of pure shock, when the soul was in darkness.
Out of this shock Aaron felt himself issuing amid a mass of terrible sensations: the fearful blow of the explosion, the noise of glass, the hoarse howl of people, the rushing of men, the sudden gulf, the awful gulfing whirlpool of horror in the social life.
He stood in agony and semi-blindness amid a chaos. Then as he began to recover his consciousness, he found himself standing by a pillar some distance from where he had been sitting: he saw a place where tables and chairs were all upside down, legs in the air, amid debris of glass and breakage: he saw the cafe almost empty, nearly everybody gone: he saw the owner, or the manager, advancing aghast to the place of debris: he saw Lilly standing not far off, white as a sheet, and as if unconscious. And still he had no idea of what had happened. He thought perhaps something had broken down. He could not understand.
Lilly began to look round. He caught Aaron's eye. And then Aaron began to approach his friend.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A bomb,” said Lilly.