But she was destined to realize the power of her victim’s threats that same night. Worn out with fatigue, she retired to her room at an early hour, and jumped into bed, exclaiming; “I must sleep!” But sleep had fled. Her crime was over in her thoughts; and rose before her in all its horror and atrocity. She knew that she was lying on her bed, at Courtornieu; and yet it seemed as if she were still in Chanlouineau’s house, first pouring out the poison, and then watching its effects, while concealed in the dressing-room. She was struggling against the idea; exerting all her strength of will to drive away these terrible memories, when she imagined she heard the key turn in the lock. Raising her head from the pillow with a start, she fancied she could perceive the door open noiselessly, and then Marie-Anne glided into the room like a phantom. She seated herself in an arm-chair near the bed, and while the tears rolled down her cheeks, she looked sadly, yet threateningly around her. The murderess hid her face under the counterpane. She shivered with terror, and a cold sweat escaped from every pore in her skin. For this seemed no mere apparition, but the frightful reality itself. Blanche did not submit to these tortures without resisting. Making a vigorous effort, she tried to reason with herself aloud, as if the sound of her voice would re-assure her. “I am dreaming!” she said. “The dead don’t return to life? To think that I’m childish enough to be frightened at phantoms which only exist in my own imagination.” She said this, but the vision did not fade. When she shut her eyes the phantom still faced her--even through her closed eyelids, and through the coverlids drawn up over her face. Say what she would, she did not succeed in sleeping till daybreak. And, worst of all, night after night, the same vision haunted her, reviving the terror which she forgot during the day-time in the broad sunlight. For she would regain her courage and become sceptical again as soon as the morning broke. “How foolish it is to be afraid of something that does not exist!” she would remark, railing at herself. “To-night I will conquer this absurd weakness.” But when evening came all her resolution vanished, and scarcely had she retired to her room than the same fears seized hold of her, and the same phantom rose before her eyes. She fancied that her nocturnal agonies would cease when the investigation anent the murder was over--that she would forget both her crime and promise; but the enquiry finished, and yet the same vision haunted her, and she did not forget. Darwin has remarked that it is when their safety is assured that great criminals really feel remorse, and Blanche might have vouched for the truth of this assertion, made by the deepest thinker and closest observer of the age.