She was so overflowing with felicity, that yielding to a feeling of expansion, she turned towards Jacques, towards this unknown individual to smile at him. In making this movement the knot of her scarf was displaced, carrying the locket away with it, and revealing the rosy neck with a slight dimple gilded by the shadow.
The fingers of Jacques clutched the handle of the knife, at the same time as he formed an irrevocable resolution.
"That is the spot where I will deal the blow," said he to himself. "Yes, in the tunnel before reaching Passy."
But, at the Trocadero station, a member of the staff got in, who, knowing Jacques, began to talk about a theft of coal that had been brought home to a driver and his fireman. From that moment everything became confused. Later on he was never able to establish the facts, exactly. The laughter continued in such a beam of happiness that he felt as if penetrated and appeased by it. Perhaps he went as far as Auteuil with the two ladies, only he had no recollection of seeing them leave the carriage.
In the end he found himself beside the Seine, without knowing how he came there. But he had the distinct remembrance of casting the knife, which had remained in his hand, with the blade up his sleeve, from the top of the bank into the river. Then he hardly knew what occurred, being half silly, absent from his being, which the other one had also left along with the knife. He must have wandered about for hours through streets and squares, wherever his body chanced to take him. People and houses filed past very faintly. Doubtless, he had gone in somewhere to get food at the end of a room full of customers, for he clearly recalled the white plates. He had also the firm impression that he saw a red broadside on the shutters of a shop. And then, all sank into a black chasm, to nothingness, where there was neither time nor space, where he lay inert, perhaps since centuries.
When Jacques came to himself, he was in his little room in the Rue Cardinet. He had fallen across his bed in his clothes. Instinct had taken him there, just as a lame dog drags himself to his kennel, or his hole. He remembered neither going upstairs, nor going to sleep. He awoke from heavy slumber, scared to suddenly regain self-possession, as if after a long fainting fit. Perhaps he had slept three hours, perhaps three days. All at once his memory returned: the confession Séverine had made of the murder, and his departure like a feline animal in search of blood. He had been beside himself, but he now had full command of his faculties, and felt astounded at what had taken place against his will. Then the recollection of the young woman awaiting him, made him leap to his feet at a bound. He looked at his watch, and saw it was already four o'clock; and, with a clear head, very calm, as if after a copious bleeding, he hastened back to the Impasse d'Amsterdam.
Séverine had been wrapped in profound slumber until noon. Then, waking up, surprised not to see Jacques there, she had lit the fire, and, dying of inanition, had made up her mind, at about two o'clock, to run down and get something to eat at a neighbouring restaurant. When Jacques appeared she had just come up again, after going on a few errands.
"Oh! my darling!" she exclaimed, as he entered the room; "I was most anxious!"
And she hung round his neck, looking into his eyes, quite close.
"What has happened?" she added inquiringly.