Please help with the understand the following sentences.
It had nothing to do with falling in love, this interest; this excitement. If, on Sunday night, after two days in his company, he had turned to her and said: 'Come away with me, Liz,' she would have laughed aloud at so absurd a notion. She had no desire to go away with him.
But a light went out of the room with him, and sprang up again when he came back. She was aware of every movement of his, from the small mallet of his forefinger as it flicked the radio switch, to the lift of his foot as it kicked a log in the fireplace.
I have a few questions:
1) What is the 'light' here, since the auther was alive froom 1896-1952, is the light here from a flashlight or a torch?
2)what is mallet here? I've looked up the dictionary and found that mallet is a hammer with a large wooden head. But I wonder mallet may not be what is said in the dictionary, does it to describe hif forefinger as long and straight?