He kept glancing back over his shoulder expectantly.

And, sure enough, pretty soon Frau Brandt followed after, in charge of the officers and wearing jingling chains.

A mob was in her wake, jeering and shouting, "Blasphemer and heretic!" and some among them were neighbors and friends of her happier days.

Some were trying to strike her, and the officers were not taking as much trouble as they might to keep them from it.
"Oh, stop them, Satan!" It was out before we remembered that he could not interrupt them for a moment without changing their whole after-lives.

He puffed a little puff toward them with his lips and they began to reel and stagger and grab at the empty air; then they broke apart and fled in every direction, shrieking, as if in intolerable pain.
He had crushed a rib of each of them with that little puff.