Assuredly this was what barred her heart. When a person has too keen a trouble, there is no room for another. Her mother had gone; she saw her there, destroyed, and so pallid, without being able to feel any more sad, notwithstanding her efforts. Call in the gendarmes! Denounce Misard! What would be the use of it, as there was about to be a general upheaval? And, little by little, invincibly, although her eyes remained fixed on the dead body, she ceased to perceive it. She returned to her own inner vision, occupied entirely by the idea that had planted itself in her brain, alive to nothing but the heavy shock of the trains, whose passage told her the time.
The approaching thunder of a slow train from Paris could be heard for an instant or two in the distance. When the locomotive at last flew by before the window, with its light, there came a flash, a perfect blaze in the room.
"Eighteen minutes past one," thought Flore. "Seven hours more. This morning at 8.16 they will come past."
Every week for months she had been worried by this expectation. She knew that on Friday morning the express driven by Jacques also took Séverine to Paris, and tortured by jealousy, she only lived, as it were, to watch them. Oh! that train flying along, and the abominable sensation she felt at being unable to cling on to the last carriage, so as to be also borne away! She fancied that all these wheels were cutting up her heart. She suffered so keenly that one night, having hidden herself, she prepared to write to the judicial authorities; for it would be all over if she could get this woman arrested. But, with the pen in her hand, she could never set the matter down. And, besides, would the authorities listen to her? All those fine people must be working together. Perhaps they would even put her in prison, as they had done with Cabuche.
No; she wanted to avenge herself, and she would do so alone, without the assistance of anyone. It was not even a thought of vengeance, as she understood the word, the idea of doing injury to cure herself. She felt the need of finishing with the matter, of upsetting everything, as if thunder and lightning had swept the couple away. Being very proud, more solidly built, and handsomer than the other, she felt convinced of her firm right to be loved; and when she went off alone along the paths of this abandoned district, with her heavy helmet of light hair, ever bare, she would have liked to come face to face with that other one, so as to settle their quarrel at the corner of a wood, after the manner of two hostile warrior women. Never yet had a man touched her; she thrashed the males, and that constituted her invincible strength. Therefore, she would be victorious.
The week before, this idea had suddenly been planted, driven into her head as by the blow of a hammer, come from she knew not where: kill them, so that they might no longer pass by, no longer go there together. She did not reason, she obeyed the savage instinct of destruction. When a thorn entered her flesh, she plucked it out. She would have cut off her finger. Kill them, kill them the first time they passed; and to do that, upset the train, drag a sleeper across the line, tear up a rail, smash everything. He, on his engine, would certainly remain there, stretched out; the woman, always in the first carriage, so as to be nearer to him, could not escape; as for the others, that constant stream of passengers, she had not even a thought. They did not count, she did not know them! And at every hour she was beset by this idea of destroying the train, of making this huge sacrifice of lives. What she desired was an unique catastrophe, sufficiently great, sufficiently deep in human gore and suffering, for her to bathe therein her enormous heart swollen with tears.
Nevertheless, on the Friday morning, she had given way, not having yet decided at what spot nor in what manner she would remove a rail. But the same night, being off duty, she had an idea, and went prowling through the tunnel as far as the Dieppe embranchment. This was one of her walks, this trip through the subterranean passage, a good half league in length, along this vaulted avenue, quite straight, where she felt the emotion of trains with their blinding lights rolling over her. Each time, she had a narrow escape of being cut to pieces, and it must have been the peril that attracted her there in a spirit of bravado.
But on this particular night, having escaped the vigilance of the watchman and advanced to the middle of the tunnel, keeping to the left, so as to make sure that any train coming towards her would pass on her right, she had the imprudence to face about, just to follow the lights of a train on the way to Havre; and when she resumed walking, a false step having made her swing round again, she lost all knowledge of the direction in which the red lights had just disappeared.
Notwithstanding her courage, she stopped, still dizzy with the clatter of the wheels, her hands cold, her bare hair starting up in a breath of terror. She now imagined that when another train came along, she would not know whether it was an up or a down train. With an effort she endeavoured to retain her reason, to remember, to think the matter over. Then, all at once, terror sent her along, haphazard, straight before her, at a frantic pace. No, no! she would not be killed before she had killed the other two!
Her feet were caught in the rails, she slipped, fell, rose up, and ran faster than before. She became affected with tunnel madness. The walls seemed drawing close to one another to squeeze her, the vaulted roof echoed imaginary sounds, menacing utterances, formidable roars. At every moment she turned her head, fancying she felt the burning steam of an engine on her neck. Twice the sudden conviction that she had made a mistake, that she would be killed from the end she was fleeing to, made her at a bound change the direction of her flight.