Before he knew what was happening, a stinging slap landed on his left cheek. Sparks shot from his eyes and his head felt as if it were being uprooted from his body. For a moment he thought that the house was collapsing and the ceiling was crashing onto his head. The precise location of the pain was not yet clear to him. All this took no more than a few seconds. Then he felt a distinct burning on his left cheek and saw Thea, as if through a fog, walking to the door and going out. For a while he went on looking at the door through which his wife had disappeared. The square patch of sunlight lying on the floor at an oblique angle to the door drew his eyes to it. It seemed to him intensely hot and shining. Gurdweill took a sudden step forward, bent down, and felt the patch of sunlight on the floor. ‘It’s not so hot,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘it’s only my imagination.’ He straightened up and remained standing where he was. His thoughts shied away from that other place. Nothing had happened there. Everything was as usual there. But in spite of himself his hand went up automatically to the side of his face and came to rest on the burning cheek — and as if a floodlight had suddenly been turned upon it, the whole scene rose vividly before his eyes. He felt a dull pain in his cheek. ‘She must have stood up first, because she was sitting down, and she couldn’t have done it sitting down …’ The irrelevant thought occurred to him. And he was immediately overwhelmed by a great shame. He glanced distractedly around the room, to make sure that nobody had seen. At that moment he felt even more ashamed for Thea than for himself. She would probably be ashamed to look him in the eye, he thought. And Gurdweill was almost ready to run after his wife, who could not have gone far, to appease her and ask her to forgive him. He took a step towards the door. Then he turned round abruptly and caught sight of his reflection in the mirror above the washstand. His face, usually so pale and downcast, was bright red, as if lit by a hidden flame. Overcome by a great weariness, he lay down on the couch and lit his pipe, which he had been holding in his hand all this time.

At that moment the old landlady entered the room without knocking, as usual. Gurdweill remained lying on the couch.