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.