"No, no!" he answered. "Do you wish us to act like savages? Why not devour his heart as well? How you must hate him!" Her face suddenly became clouded. This remark took her from her thoughts of prudent preparation, to reveal to her the horror of the deed. Her eyes filled with tears, and she said: "I have suffered too much for the last few months, to have much affection for him. I have repeated a hundred times over: anything rather than remain another week with this man. But you are right. It is frightful to come to that, we really must want to be happy together. Anyhow, we will go down without a light. You will stand behind the door, and when I have opened, and he has come in, you will do what you like. If I interfere, it is only to help you; it is so that you may not have all the trouble yourself. I am arranging the thing as well as I can." He went to the table where he saw the knife, the weapon that had already been used by the husband, and which she had evidently placed there, so that he might strike him in his turn with it. The wide open blade shone beneath the lamp. Jacques took it up and examined it. She watched him, but said nothing. As he held the weapon in his hand there was no need to speak to him about it. And she only opened her lips when he had laid it down again on the table. "Listen, my darling," she continued, "I am not urging you on to it, am I? There is still time. Go away, if you do not feel you can do it." But he became obstinate, and with a violent gesture exclaimed: "Do you take me for a coward? This time it is settled. I have sworn." At that moment, the house was set rocking by the thunder of a train, which passed like a thunderbolt, and so close to the room that it seemed to go through it in its roar, and Jacques added: "There is his train. The through train to Paris. He got down at Barentin, and will be here in half an hour." Neither Jacques nor Séverine made any further remark for some time. In their minds they saw this man advancing through the night along the narrow paths. Jacques had begun to walk up and down the room, as if counting the steps of the other whom each stride brought a little nearer. Another, another; and, at the last one, he would be in ambush behind the vestibule door, and would drive the knife into his neck the moment he entered. Séverine, still with the bedclothes up to her chin, lying on her back, with her great eyes motionless, watched him going and coming, her mind lulled by the cadence of his walk, which reached her like the echo of distant footsteps over there. They came without pause, one after the other, and nothing would now stop them. When the sufficient number had been taken, she would spring out of bed, and go down to open the door, with bare feet and without a light. "Is it you, my dear? Come in, I went to bed!" she would say. And he would not even answer. He would sink down in the obscurity with his throat gashed open.