He stood in front of her with his hands thrust deeply into his trouser-pockets, biting the ends of his moustache, while his head was so much on one side it almost lay on his shoulder. He looked like a savage, infuriated bull.
She wanted to hand him the photograph and packet of letters, and tell him everything, but her limbs and tongue seemed paralysed.
"I ... I ... I only ..." she stammered with a sob.
"I ... I ... I only ..." he scoffingly mimicked her. "I only wanted to wriggle myself in here. I ... I ... would like to be mistress here. Isn't that it, eh? ... No, no, my angel; we must put an end to this at once.... Your so-called ill-starred love of my factory always struck me as a bit suspicious. Get out of here! Get out, I say! Get out!"
And the next minute she was out--out in the street.
She still held the packet in its tissue-paper wrappings convulsively between her cramped fingers. Staggering, she walked on, past staring red houses that threatened to fall on her. She saw a truck loaded with sacks of flour scattering white clouds. A pulley screeched in a factory yard. Every time she saw anyone coming towards her she swerved into the gutter, shrinking away in fear from the jeers of the passer-by. A skein of wool that someone had lost lay on the pavement. She picked it up and thought of hanging herself, for something must be done.
It was all very well to be abandoned and deserted; when your time came you could expect nothing else, and must resign yourself to fate--but to be stormed at and flung off, to be kicked out as if you were a burglar, to be despised and spat upon like the lowest woman in the streets--oh, that was too much!
She must do something to be revenged on him. And even if such a revenge would no longer affect him, that didn't matter. He should at least be convinced that he was to blame for everything. When she was wallowing in that mire of which he had formerly expressed so much horror on her account--when she was there ... Yes, something must be done, now, at once--some suicidal act which would make her worthy of the gross treatment she had received at his hands--something to free her from these torments, these horrible torments!
Her heart hung in her breast like a painful tumour. She could have outlined it with her finger, it felt so sharply prominent. It was as if some claw held it in its clutch. And then again the vultures occurred to her--the vultures crouching on the rocks in Kellermann's picture.
They were crouching to spring on Lilly Czepanek. Whom else? Ah, now she had it! The thought flashed through her brain like an arrow. She called a cab and drove quickly to Herr Kellermann's house.