“Nothing!”
“Did he not come?”
“Yes, he came. But I had not the necessary energy to kill him. I thought it was an easier matter to become a murderer. And you thought so too, eh?”
“Cayrol!” cried Madame Desvarennes, shuddering, and troubled to find that she had been so easily understood by him whom she had armed on her behalf.
“The opportunity was a rare one, though,” continued Cayrol, getting excited. “Fancy; I found them together under my own roof. The law allowed me, if not the actual right to kill them, at least an excuse if I did so. Well, at the decisive moment, when I ought to have struck the blow, my heart failed me. He lives, and Jeanne loves him.”
There was a pause.
“What are you going to do?”
“Get rid of him in another way,” answered Cayrol. “I had only two ways of killing him. One was to catch him in my own house, the other to call him out. My will failed me in the one case; my want of skill would fail me in the other. I will not fight Serge. Not because I fear death, for my life is blighted, and I don’t value it; but if I were dead, Jeanne would belong to him, and I could not bear the thought of that even in death. I must separate them forever.”
“And how?”
“By forcing him to disappear.”