"Love me, love me fondly, also," he continued. "Oh! with all your strength, for I have as great a need of love as you."
She shuddered, and wished to know more.
"If you are in grief, you must confide in me," said she.
"No, no," he replied, "not grief, things that do not exist, moments of sadness that make me horribly unhappy, without it being even possible to speak of them."
They strained one another, mingling their frightfully melancholy trouble. It was infinite suffering without any possible oblivion, and without pardon. They wept, and upon them they felt the blind force of life, made up of struggles and death.
"Come," said Jacques, disengaging himself, "it is time to think of leaving! To-night you will be at Havre!"
Séverine, with clouded brow and vacant eyes, murmured after a silence:
"If I were only free, if my husband were no longer there. Ah! how soon we should forget!"
He gave a violent gesture, and thinking aloud, he muttered:
"Still we cannot kill him!"