"Ah! my darling," she continued, "if you only knew how I yearn for kindness! Love me, love me fondly, because, you see, it is only your love that can make me forget. Now that I have told you all my trouble, you must not leave me. Oh! I implore you!" Jacques felt penetrated by this tenderness. An invincible relaxation softened him little by little, and he stammered out: "No, no, I love you, do not be afraid." And quite overcome, he also wept, in face of the fatality of that abominable evil which had again taken hold of him, and of which he would never be cured. It was shame, and despair without limit. "Love me, love me fondly, also," he continued. "Oh! with all your strength, for I have as great a need of love as you." She shuddered, and wished to know more. "If you are in grief, you must confide in me," said she. "No, no," he replied, "not grief, things that do not exist, moments of sadness that make me horribly unhappy, without it being even possible to speak of them." They strained one another, mingling their frightfully melancholy trouble. It was infinite suffering without any possible oblivion, and without pardon. They wept, and upon them they felt the blind force of life, made up of struggles and death. "Come," said Jacques, disengaging himself, "it is time to think of leaving! To-night you will be at Havre!" Séverine, with clouded brow and vacant eyes, murmured after a silence: "If I were only free, if my husband were no longer there. Ah! how soon we should forget!" He gave a violent gesture, and thinking aloud, he muttered: "Still we cannot kill him!" She gazed at him fixedly, and he started, astonished at what he had said, for such an idea had never entered his mind. But as he wished to kill someone, why not kill this embarrassing man? And, as he left her to run to the depôt, she again clasped him in her arms, and smothered him with kisses. "Oh! my darling," she repeated, "love me fondly. I will love you, more and more. We shall be happy, you will see." CHAPTER IX During the ensuing days at Havre, Jacques and Séverine, who were alarmed, displayed great prudence. As Roubaud knew all, would he not be on the watch to surprise and wreak vengeance on them in a burst of rage? They recalled his previous angry fits of jealousy, his brutalities of a former porter, when he struck out with his clenched fists; and now, observing him so sour, so mute, with his troubled eyes, they imagined he must be meditating some savage, cunning trick, some stealthy snare to get them in his clutches. So, for the first few months, they were ever on the alert, and in meeting one another took all kinds of precautions.