All of a sudden, before it even became sufficiently light for him to distinguish the object, he had guessed that the knife he had used to cut the cake the previous night lay on the table. He now saw nothing but this knife, a small pointed weapon. And as day grew, all the clear rays from the two windows centred upon this thin blade. In terror of what his hands might do, he thrust them farther under him, for he could feel that they were agitated, in open revolt, more powerful than his own will. Would they cease to belong to him, those hands that came from another, bequeathed to him by some ancestor of the days when man strangled animals in the woods? So as not to see the knife, Jacques turned towards Séverine, who was sleeping very calmly in her intense fatigue, with the even respiration of a child. Her mass of unbound, black hair made her a sombre pillow, and spread over her shoulders. Beneath her chin, her throat appeared amidst the curls, a throat of cream-like delicacy, faintly tinted with rose. He gazed at her, as if he did not know her. And yet he adored her, carrying her image along with him, impressed on his mind, wherever he went. She was ever in his thoughts, even when he was driving his engine; and so much so, that on one occasion, when he awoke to reality, as from a dream, it was to find himself going at full speed past a station, in defiance of the signals. But, at the sight of that white throat, he was overcome by a sudden, inexorable fascination; and, with a feeling of horror, of which he still had conscience, he felt the imperious necessity rising within him to take the knife from the table and bury it up to the handle in the flesh of this woman. He heard the thud of the blade entering the throat, he saw the body quake with three spasms, then stiffen in the death agony amidst a crimson flood. In the struggle to free himself from these haunting thoughts, he every second lost a little of his will. It seemed to be succumbing to the fixed idea, to be reaching that extremity when a man yields, vanquished, to the impulse of instinct. Everything went wrong. His revolted hands, overcoming his effort to conceal them, became unclasped of themselves, and escaped. He then understood that, henceforth, he was not their master, and that they would go, and brutally satisfy themselves if he continued gazing at Séverine. Although it was now broad daylight, the room appeared to him to be full of reddish smoke, as if it was a dawn of icy fog, drowning everything. He shivered with fever. He had taken the knife, and concealed it up his sleeve, certain of killing one woman, the first he should meet on the pavement outside, when a crumpling of linen, a prolonged sigh, made him turn pale and stop riveted beside the table. It was Séverine waking up.