"The train!" she said. "Come and see!"
He went; and she encircled his neck with her bare arm, leaning on his shoulder.
"It is entering the tunnel," she said again, prompted by the difference in sound.
In George's ears the rumbling increased in a frightful manner. He saw, as in a hallucination, his mistress and himself beneath the dark roof, the rapid approach of the headlight in the dark, the short struggle on the rails, the simultaneous fall, the bodies crushed by the horrible violence; and, at the same time, he felt the contact of the supple woman, caressing, always triumphant. And, added to the physical horror of this barbarous destruction, he felt an exasperated rancor against her who seemed to escape his hate.
Both leaning against the parapet, they watched the deafening train, rapid and sinister, that shook the house to its very foundations, and even imparted the shock to them.
"At night," said Hippolyte, pressing still closer to him, "I'm afraid when the train shakes the house as it passes. Aren't you, too? I have often felt you tremble."
He did not hear her. An immense tumult stirred his whole being; it was the rudest and most obscure agitation that his soul had ever experienced. Incoherent thoughts and images whirled in his brain, and his heart writhed beneath a thousand cruel punctures. But one fixed image dominated all the others, invaded the centre of his soul. What was he doing at this hour five years before? He was holding vigil over a cadaver; he was contemplating a face hidden beneath a black veil, a long, pale hand——
Hippolyte's restless hands touched him, crept into his hair, tickled his neck. On his neck, on his ear, he felt a warm mouth. With an instinctive motion that he could not repress, he drew aside, walked away. She laughed that singular laugh, ironical and immodest, which burst out and resounded from between her teeth whenever her lover refused himself to her. And under this obsession he heard once more the slow and limpid syllables: "For fear of my kisses!"
A low crepitation, mingled with the distinct reports, still came from the festive town. The fireworks were beginning again.
Hippolyte turned toward the spectacle.