When they at last went to sleep, it was not daylight, but a streak of dawn began to whiten the gloom that had hidden them from one another, as if both had been wrapped in a black mantle. He slept like a top until ten o'clock, without a dream; and, when he opened his eyes, he was alone. Séverine was dressing in her own apartment, on the other side of the landing. A sheet of clear sun entered through the window of the room occupied by Jacques, showing up the red curtains of the bedstead, the red paper on the walls, all that red with which the place was flaming; while the house tottered in the thunder of a train that had just sped past. It must have been this train that awakened him. Bedazzled by the glare of light, he looked at the sun, at the streaming crimson surroundings amidst which he found himself; then he recollected: the matter was settled, it was the next night that he would kill, when this great sun had disappeared. The day passed as had been arranged by Séverine and Jacques. Before breakfast, she requested Misard to take the telegram for her husband to Doinville; and at about three o'clock, as Cabuche was there, Jacques openly made his preparations for departure. As he was leaving to catch the 4.15 train from Barentin, Cabuche, having nothing to do, feeling himself drawn to the other by his secret passion, happy to find in the sweetheart something in common with the woman he was in love with himself, accompanied the driver to the station. Jacques reached Rouen at 4.40, and, getting down, found accommodation at a small inn near the railway kept by a woman from the same neighbourhood as himself. He spoke of looking up his comrades on the morrow, before proceeding to Paris to resume duty. But he said he felt very tired, having presumed too much on his strength; and, at six o'clock, he went off to bed, in a room he had taken on the ground floor, which had a window opening on a deserted alley. Ten minutes later, he was on the road to La Croix-de-Maufras, having got out of this window without being seen, and taken good care to close the shutters, so as to be able to secretly return the same way. It was not until a quarter after nine that Jacques found himself before the solitary house standing aslant beside the line, in the distress of its abandonment. The night was very dark, not a glimmer could be distinguished on the hermetically closed front. And Jacques again felt that painful blow in his heart, that feeling of frightful sadness which seemed like the presentiment of the evil that awaited him there.