"But, my darling," she continued, "I have just been thinking, there is something more. If you remain here with me, the suggestion of suicide will certainly be viewed with suspicion. You must go away. Do you understand? You will leave to-morrow, openly, in the presence of Cabuche and Misard, so that the fact of your departure may be well established. You will take the train at Barentin, and leave it at Rouen, on some pretence or other; then, as soon as it is dark, you will return, and I will let you in the back way. It is only four leagues, and you can be here in less than three hours. This time everything is settled, and, if you like, it is agreed."
"Yes," he answered; "I am willing, and it is agreed."
It was now he who reflected, and there came a long silence. All at once, she broke out:
"Yes; but what about the pretext for bringing him here? In any case, he could only take the eight o'clock at night train, after coming off duty, and would not get here before ten o'clock, which is all the better. Hi! that person who wishes to see the house, with a view to purchasing it, of whom Misard spoke to me, and who is coming the day after to-morrow morning! That will do. I will send my husband a wire the first thing, to say his presence is absolutely necessary. He will be here to-morrow night. You will leave in the afternoon, and will be able to get back before he arrives. It will be dark, no moon, nothing to interfere with us. Everything dovetails in perfectly."
"Yes," said he approvingly, "perfectly."
When they at last went to sleep, it was not daylight, but a streak of dawn began to whiten the gloom that had hidden them from one another, as if both had been wrapped in a black mantle. He slept like a top until ten o'clock, without a dream; and, when he opened his eyes, he was alone. Séverine was dressing in her own apartment, on the other side of the landing. A sheet of clear sun entered through the window of the room occupied by Jacques, showing up the red curtains of the bedstead, the red paper on the walls, all that red with which the place was flaming; while the house tottered in the thunder of a train that had just sped past. It must have been this train that awakened him. Bedazzled by the glare of light, he looked at the sun, at the streaming crimson surroundings amidst which he found himself; then he recollected: the matter was settled, it was the next night that he would kill, when this great sun had disappeared.
The day passed as had been arranged by Séverine and Jacques. Before breakfast, she requested Misard to take the telegram for her husband to Doinville; and at about three o'clock, as Cabuche was there, Jacques openly made his preparations for departure. As he was leaving to catch the 4.15 train from Barentin, Cabuche, having nothing to do, feeling himself drawn to the other by his secret passion, happy to find in the sweetheart something in common with the woman he was in love with himself, accompanied the driver to the station. Jacques reached Rouen at 4.40, and, getting down, found accommodation at a small inn near the railway kept by a woman from the same neighbourhood as himself. He spoke of looking up his comrades on the morrow, before proceeding to Paris to resume duty. But he said he felt very tired, having presumed too much on his strength; and, at six o'clock, he went off to bed, in a room he had taken on the ground floor, which had a window opening on a deserted alley. Ten minutes later, he was on the road to La Croix-de-Maufras, having got out of this window without being seen, and taken good care to close the shutters, so as to be able to secretly return the same way.
It was not until a quarter after nine that Jacques found himself before the solitary house standing aslant beside the line, in the distress of its abandonment. The night was very dark, not a glimmer could be distinguished on the hermetically closed front. And Jacques again felt that painful blow in his heart, that feeling of frightful sadness which seemed like the presentiment of the evil that awaited him there.
As had been arranged with Séverine, he threw three small pebbles against a shutter of the red room; then he went to the back of the house where a door at last silently opened. Having closed it behind him, he followed the light footsteps that went feeling their way up the staircase. But when he reached the bedroom, and by the light of a large lamp burning on the corner of a table perceived the bed in disorder, the clothes of the young woman thrown on a chair, and herself in a dressing-gown, with her volume of hair arranged for the night, coiled on the top of her head, leaving her neck bare, he stood motionless with surprise.
"What!" he exclaimed; "you had gone to bed?"