"There is his train. The through train to Paris. He got down at Barentin, and will be here in half an hour."
Neither Jacques nor Séverine made any further remark for some time. In their minds they saw this man advancing through the night along the narrow paths. Jacques had begun to walk up and down the room, as if counting the steps of the other whom each stride brought a little nearer. Another, another; and, at the last one, he would be in ambush behind the vestibule door, and would drive the knife into his neck the moment he entered. Séverine, still with the bedclothes up to her chin, lying on her back, with her great eyes motionless, watched him going and coming, her mind lulled by the cadence of his walk, which reached her like the echo of distant footsteps over there. They came without pause, one after the other, and nothing would now stop them. When the sufficient number had been taken, she would spring out of bed, and go down to open the door, with bare feet and without a light. "Is it you, my dear? Come in, I went to bed!" she would say. And he would not even answer. He would sink down in the obscurity with his throat gashed open.
Again a train went by. One on the down-line this time, the slow train which passed La Croix-de-Maufras five minutes after the other. Jacques stopped in his walk, surprised. Only five minutes had expired! How long the half hour would be! He experienced the necessity of keeping on the move, and resumed striding from one end of the room to the other. He began to feel anxious, and was already communing with himself: would he be able to do it? He was familiar with the progress of the phenomenon within him, from having followed it on more than ten different occasions; first of all a certainty, an absolute resolution to kill; then a weight in the hollow of the chest, a chill in feet and hands; and all at once the loss of vigour, the impotence of the will to act upon the muscles which had become inert.
In order to gain energy by reasoning, he repeated what he had said to himself so often: it was his interest to suppress this man—the fortune awaiting him in America, the possession of the woman he loved. The worst of it was, that on finding the latter so scantily clothed a few moments before, he verily believed the enterprise would again come to naught; for, as soon as the old shiver returned, he ceased to have command over himself. For an instant he had trembled in presence of the temptation which became too great: she offering herself, and the open knife lying there. But now he felt strong, girded for the effort. He could do it. And he continued waiting for the man, striding up and down the apartment from door to window, passing at each turn beside the bed which he would not look at.
Séverine continued to lie still in that bed. With her head motionless on the pillow, she now watched him come and go in a seesaw motion of the eyes. She also felt anxious, agitated with the fear that this night his courage again would fail him. Polish off this business and begin anew, that was all she wanted. She was entirely for the one who held her, and heartless for the other whom she had never cared for. They were getting rid of him because he was in the way. Nothing could be more natural; and she had to reflect, to be touched by the abomination of the crime. As soon as the vision of blood and the horrible complications disappeared, she resumed her smiling serenity with her innocent, tender, and docile face.
Nevertheless, she, who thought she knew Jacques, was astonished at what she observed. He had his round head of a handsome young man, his curly hair, his coal black moustache, his brown eyes sparkling with gold; but his lower jaw advanced so prominently, with a sort of biting expression, that it disfigured him. He had just now looked at her as he passed, as if in spite of himself; and the brilliancy of his eyes became deadened with a ruddy cloud, while at the same time he started backward in a recoil of all his frame.
Why did he avoid her? Could it be because he was losing his courage, once more? Latterly, ignorant of the constant danger of death threatening her while in his company, she had attributed her instinctive fright, for which there was no apparent cause, to the presentiment of an approaching rupture. The conviction abruptly took firm hold of her, that if presently he found himself unable to strike, he would flee never to return. After that she made up her mind that he would kill, and that she would know how to give him strength, should he need it.