It was against herself that she asked to be protected, against her wild-beast instincts, against the monster that dwelt within her and forced her to kill, always to kill.
"Always?" Lupin asked himself.
And he remembered the night, two days since, when, standing over him, with her dagger raised against the enemy who had been harassing her for months, against the indefatigable enemy who had run her to earth after each of her crimes, he remembered that, on that night, she had not killed. And yet it would have been easy: the enemy lay lifeless and powerless. One blow and the implacable struggle was over. No, she had not killed, she too had given way to feelings stronger than her own cruelty, to mysterious feelings of pity, of sympathy, of admiration for the man who had so often mastered her.
No, she had not killed, that time. And now, by a really terrifying vicissitude of fate, it was he who had killed her.
"I have taken life!" he thought, shuddering from head to foot. "These hands have killed a living being; and that creature is Dolores! . . . Dolores! . . . Dolores! . . ."
He never ceased repeating her name, her name of sorrow, and he never ceased staring at her, a sad, lifeless thing, harmless now, a poor hunk of flesh, with no more consciousness than a little heap of withered leaves or a little dead bird by the roadside.
Oh! how could he do other than quiver with compassion, seeing that of those two, face to face, he was the murderer, and she, who was no more, the victim?
"Dolores! . . . Dolores! . . . Dolores! . . ."
The daylight found Lupin seated beside the dead woman, remembering and thinking, while his lips, from time to time, uttered the disconsolate syllables: