His fingers moved among rattling bottles on the stove.
"Here it is--no. Now, where the devil...."
A bottle upset; he grasped at it hurriedly and knocked over another; the liquid gurgled out into a pool on the floor.
"A basin--quick, give me a basin! My silver nitrate ... quick, a basin!"
They reached about for one in haste and confusion.
"Open the door so we can see!" cried Hedvig. But at the same moment her father came towards them. His face looked as if smeared with blood in the light from the red-covered pane; his teeth showed between parted lips.
"You--you're the serpent in the garden!" he hissed.
"Oh, don't!" she cried, her voice rising to a scream.
Emanuel was beginning to cry. Hedvig tried to wriggle through with him to the door, but stepped on the basin her father had just set on the floor.
This was too much for Egholm. He felt he must either discharge the current within, or be fused by it, like an overcharged wire.
He staggered one step back, then forward again. His arms rose up as if with an inner force of their own; then with his full strength he struck his clenched fist in his wife's face.
Once again, and once again he struck, the flesh of her checks squelching under the blows. Then he stumbled out, and closed the door carefully behind him.
Vang was seated on the bed exactly as before. What could he say to him? It was the first time any stranger had witnessed a scene of this sort. What was the use of starting upon heart-rending explanations, which Vang would never understand? And how much of the trouble had been audible through the close-padded door?
Vang gets to his feet; he must go now--yes, he must. There is something cowed about him; he speaks in a low voice, and does not look up. And Egholm, suddenly aware of Anna's sobbing and Hedvig's uncontrolled blubbering plainly heard through the door, realises that Vang must have been able to follow the drama through all its painful details.
And now he is going off, convinced that Egholm is a cruel, cruel brute.
It must not be! Egholm feels now, more strongly than ever before, that he _can_ be so good, so good!
"No, no; you mustn't go!" he cries, as Vang steps cautiously over the bath full of flower-pots. He grips him by the arm, anxious to prove his all-embracing affection on the spot. "You mustn't go now I'm in all this mess. Didn't you say we'd been as one together? Wait a bit; there's something I want to talk to you about."