'Yes, you, Mr. Ratsch.'

There followed a brief silence.

'Really, upon my word...' Mr. Ratsch was beginning; 'how dare you...
such insolence...'

Susanna all at once drew herself up to her full height, and still
holding her elbows, squeezing them tight, drumming on them with her
fingers, she stood still facing Ratsch. She seemed to challenge him to
conflict, to stand up to meet him. Her face was changed; it became
suddenly, in one instant, extraordinarily beautiful, and terrible too; a
sort of bright, cold brilliance--the brilliance of steel--gleamed in her
lustreless eyes; the lips that had been quivering were compressed in one
straight, mercilessly stern line. Susanna challenged Ratsch, but he
gazed blankly, and suddenly subsiding into silence, all of a heap, so to
say, drew his head in, even stepped back a pace. The veteran of the year
twelve was afraid; there could be no mistake about that.

Susanna slowly turned her eyes from him to me, as though calling upon me
to witness her victory, and the humiliation of her foe, and, smiling
once more, she walked out of the room.

The veteran remained a little while motionless in his arm-chair; at
last, as though recollecting a forgotten part, he roused himself, got
up, and, slapping me on the shoulder, laughed his noisy guffaw.

'There, 'pon my soul! fancy now, it's over ten years I've been living
with that young lady, and yet she never can see when I'm joking, and