"I shall not go," she said, "till I hear what you've got to say for yourself;" and to give force to her resolve, she sank on to the creaking sofa, which was covered by a dirty, odoriferous grey horsecloth, folded several times to protect whoever sat down or lay on it from the projecting springs.
He was forced to yield. "Well, then, look here. A man is, so to speak, a man, isn't he? And when he is given up in a beastly mean sort of way he----"
"Mean way!" Lilly faltered. "What was there mean in my letter? Didn't I pour out my whole heart in it, and didn't dear Schwertfeger----?"
She could not go on, she was so choked with scorn and anger.
In the meantime he had arrived at the right policy to pursue, after being completely nonplussed at first.
"That's just it," he said, growing more offended every moment. "Can it be supposed that a love affair like ours was to close with a lukewarm moral sermon? ... and from that Schwertfeger woman too? Did I deserve it of you, to be dismissed through a third person that shabby, hideous old thing too? Wasn't it enough to drive a fellow desperate ... after all I have done for you?"
"Done for me?" echoed Lilly. "What have you done for me, pray?"
"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.