Jacques was unable to close his eyes, which a hand, invisible in the obscurity, seemed to keep open. He could now distinguish nothing in the room. Every object had disappeared, stove, furniture, and walls. He had to turn round to find the two pale squares of windows, which appeared motionless and faint as in a dream. Notwithstanding his excessive fatigue, prodigious cerebral activity kept him in a thrill, ceaselessly unwinding the same coil of ideas. Each time that, by an effort of will, he fancied himself slipping off to sleep, the same haunting pictures began filing by again, awakening the same sensations. And the scene unfolded thus, with mechanical regularity, while his fixed, wide-open eyes became clouded, was that of the murder, detail by detail. It kept returning again and again, identically the same, gaining hold on him, driving him crazy. The knife entering the throat with a thud, the body giving three long twitches, life ebbing away in a flood of warm blood--a crimson flood which he fancied he felt coursing over his hands. Twenty, thirty times, the knife went in, and the body quivered. Oh! if he could but deal a blow like that, satisfy his long craving, learn what one experiences, become acquainted with that minute which is longer than a lifetime! In spite of his effort to sleep, the invisible fingers kept his eyes open; and in the darkness the murder scene reappeared in all its sanguinary traits. Then, he ceased the struggle and remained a prey to the stubborn vision. He could hear within him the unfettered labour of the brain, the rumble of the whole machine. It came from long ago, from his youth. And yet he had fancied himself cured, for this desire to kill had been dead for months; but, since the story of that crime had been told him just now, he had never felt the feeling so intensely. An intolerable warmth ran up his spine, and at the back of the neck he felt a pricking, as if red-hot needles were boring into him. He became afraid of his hands, and imprisoned them under him, as if he dreaded some abomination on their part, some act that he was determined not to allow them to commit. Each time the cuckoo clock struck, Jacques counted the strokes. Four o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock. He longed for daylight, in the hope that dawn would dispel this nightmare. And now, he turned towards the windows, watching the panes of glass. But he could see naught save the vague reflex of the snow. At a quarter to five he had heard the through train arrive from Havre, with a delay of only forty minutes which proved that the line must be clear. And it was not until after seven that he saw the window panes slowly becoming milky white. At length the darkness in the apartment disappeared, to give place to an uncertain glimmer, in which the furniture looked as if floating. The stove, the cupboard, the sideboard reappeared. He was still unable to close his lids. His eyes seemed determined to see.