Tanny opened her eyes wide in a sort of pleased bewilderment, and Jim turned his face aside, and hung his clasped hands between his knees.
"There's a great silence, suddenly!" said Tanny.
"What is there to say ?" ejaculated Lilly rapidly, with a spoonful of breath which he managed to compress and control into speech.

Then he sat motionless again, concerned with the business of getting back his wind, and not letting the other two see.
Jim jerked in his chair, and looked round.
"It isn't that I don't like the man," he said, in a rather small voice.
"But I knew if he went on I should have to do it." To Lilly, rigid and physically preoccupied, there sounded a sort of self-consciousness in Jim's voice, as if the whole thing had been semi-deliberate.

He detected the sort of maudlin deliberateness which goes with hysterics, and he was colder, more icy than ever.
Tanny looked at Lilly, puzzled, bewildered, but still rather pleased, as if she demanded an answer.

None being forthcoming, she said: "Of course, you mustn't expect to say all those things without rousing a man." Still Lilly did not answer.

Jim glanced at him, then looked at Tanny.
"It isn't that I don't like him," he said, slowly.