Madame Chauchat almost invariably came late to meals. Until she came, Hans Castorp could not sit and keep his feet still, but must wait in suspense for the crashing of the glass door; he knew it would make him start and that his face would feel cold all over, and this was what regularly happened. At first he had jerked round his head infuriated and followed the offender with angry eyes to her seat at the “good” Russian table. He may even have muttered some abusive epithet between his teeth, some outraged cry of protest. But now he only bent over his plate, bit his lips, or deliberately turned his head away. It seemed to him that anger was no longer in place; he even had an obscure feeling that he was partly responsible, that he shared the blame with her before the others. In short, it would be no longer so true to say he was ashamed of Frau Chauchat as that he was ashamed for her⁠—a feeling he might well have spared himself, for not a soul in the room troubled either over Frau Chauchat’s misconduct or Hans Castorp’s sensitiveness to it⁠—with the possible exception of the schoolmistress, Fräulein Engelhart, on his right.