She thought:
"Nothing can save me now from the everlasting pit. A little more or less, it will be just the same."
Christophe awkwardly loaded the revolver.
"Anna," he said, and his voice trembled. "One of us will see the other die."
She wrenched the pistol out of his hands and said selfishly:
"I shall be the first."
They looked at each other once more…. Alas! At the very moment when they were to die for each other they felt so far apart!… Each was thinking in terror:
"What am I doing? What am I doing?"
And each was reading the other's eyes. The absurdity of the thing was what struck Christophe most. All his life gone for nothing: vain his struggles: vain his suffering: vain his hopes: all botched, flung to the winds: one foolish act was to wipe all away…. In his normal state he would have wrenched the revolver away from Anna and flung it out of the window and cried:
"No, no! I will not."