To find that he had been struggling and perspiring in the grasp of a shadow was a fresh offence, merely, for the count of the absentees. Obviously, shadow or not, there or not there, it was they. He felt this a little; but they had disappeared into the Ewigkeit for the moment. He had been again beating the air. This should have been a climax, of blows, words, definite things. But things remained vague. The turmoil of the evening remained his, the solid part of it, unshared by anybody else. He smiled, rather hideously and menacingly, at the two English people near him, and walked away. He was not going in search of Anastasya. They would be met somewhere or other, no doubt. All he wanted now was to get away from the English club as soon as possible.
While he was making towards the vestibule he was confronted again with Fräulein Lipmann. “Herr Kreisler, I wish to speak to you,” he heard her say.
“Go to the devil!” he answered without hesitation or softness.
“Besotted fool! if you don’t go at once, I’ll get⸺”
Turning on her like lightning, with exasperation perfectly meeting hers, his right hand threatening, quickly raised towards his left shoulder, he shouted:
“Lass mich doch—gemeine alte Sau!”
The hissing, thunderous explosion was the last thing in vocal virulence. The muscles all seemed gathered up at his ears like reins, and the flesh tightened and white round his mouth.
Fräulein Lipmann took several steps back. Kreisler with equal quickness turned away, rapped on the counter, while the attendant looked for his hat, and left the Club. Fräulein Lippmann was left with the heavy, unforgettable word “sow” deposited in her boiling spirit, that, boil as it might, would hardly reduce this word to tenderness or digestibility.