The train was not yet beneath the vault. No sound announced its coming. Nothing was visible but this very bright, gay light, increasing little by little in volume. Drawn up to her full, tall height, in all the suppleness of her build, evenly balanced on her strong lower limbs, she now advanced at a long stride, but without running, as if going to meet a friend to whom she wished to spare a part of the distance separating them. But the train had just entered the tunnel, the frightful roar approached, shaking the ground with a tempestuous blast; while the star had become an enormous eye, ever expanding, bursting out as if from its orbit of gloom.
Then, under the empire of an inexplicable sentiment, perhaps to die quite alone, she emptied her pockets without pausing in her heroic, obstinate march, and placed quite a little pile of articles beside the line: a pocket-handkerchief, some keys, some string, a couple of knives; she even removed the fichu tied round her neck, leaving her bodice unhooked and torn half open.
The eye changed into a brazier, into the mouth of an oven vomiting fire. The breath of the monster already reached her, damp and warm, in the roll of thunder that became more and more deafening. And she continued to walk on, going straight towards the furnace so as not to miss the engine, fascinated like some night insect attracted by a flame. And in the frightful shock, in the embrace, she still drew herself up, as if stirred by the final revolt of a wrestler woman, she sought to clasp the giant, and lay him low. Her head went full into the lantern which was extinguished.
It was more than an hour afterwards that a party came to pick up the corpse of Flore. The driver had distinctly seen the tall, pale-faced figure of this girl advancing towards the engine, with all the strange aspect of a terrifying apparition, in the deluge of vivid light that streamed upon her; and, when the lantern abruptly went out, and the train rolled along with its peal of thunder in dense obscurity, he shuddered as he felt death pass by. On issuing from the tunnel he did his best to inform the watchman of the accident, by shouting to him. But only at Barentin could he relate that somebody had just been cut in two down the line. It was certainly a woman for female hair, mingled with bits of skull, still remained sticking to the broken glass of the lamp.
And when the men sent to look for the body discovered it, they started to find it so white—as white as marble. It was lying on the up-line, thrown there by the violence of the shock: the head all pulp, the limbs without a scratch, and half bare, displaying admirable beauty in their purity and strength. The men wrapped up the corpse in silence. They had recognised it. She had certainly done away with herself in a fit of craziness, to escape the terrible responsibility weighing on her.
At midnight the corpse of Flore rested in the little, low habitation beside that of her mother. A mattress had been spread on the ground, and a candle lighted between the two bodies. The great fixed eyes of Aunt Phasie, whose head remained inclined on her shoulder, and whose twisted mouth still bore its hideous grin, seemed now to be gazing at her daughter; while all around in the solitude, amid the profound silence could be heard the grim labour—the panting efforts of Misard, who had resumed his search.
And at the prescribed intervals, the trains flew by, crossing one another on the two lines, the traffic having just been completely restored. They passed inexorably and indifferently with their all-powerful mechanism, ignorant of these dramas and these crimes. What mattered the unknown of the multitude fallen on the road, crushed beneath the wheels? The dead had been removed, the blood washed away, and the trains started off again for yonder, towards the future.