Yes, that was it. He had killed, and he had this thing on the ground. She had just been hurled down like the other; but on her back, the left arm doubled under her right side, twisted, half-torn from her shoulder. Was it not on the night when the body of the President was found that with heart beating fit to burst, he had sworn to dare in his turn, in a prurience for murder which exasperated him like a concupiscence at the sight of the slaughtered man? Ah! if he could only have the pluck, satisfy himself, drive in the knife! This had germinated and developed within him obscurely. For a year, not an hour had gone by without him having advanced towards the inevitable result. Even with his arms about the neck of this woman, and amidst her kisses, the secret work was approaching its termination; and the two murders had become united. Did not the one show the logic of the other? The clatter of a house falling down, a jolting of the floor drew Jacques from his gaping contemplation of the dead woman. Were the doors flying into splinters? Had people arrived to arrest him? He looked around, but only to find dull, silent solitude. Ah! yes; another train! But the man who would be knocking at the door below, the man whom he wished to kill! He had completely forgotten him. If he regretted nothing, he already judged himself an idiot. What! what had happened? The woman he loved, who loved him passionately, was lying on the floor with her throat cut; while the husband, the obstacle to his happiness, was still alive, and still advancing step by step in the obscurity. He had been unable to wait for this man, who for months had been so sparing of the scruples of his education, and of the ideas of humanity slowly acquired and transmitted; with contempt for his own interest, he had just been carried away by the heredity of violence, by that craving to commit murder, which in the primitive forests threw animal upon animal. Does anyone kill as the result of reasoning? People only kill by an impulse of blood and nerves--the necessity to live, the joy of being strong. He now merely experienced the lassitude of one satiated. Then he became scared and endeavoured to understand, but without finding anything else than astonishment and the bitter sadness of the irreparable as a result of his gratified passion. The sight of the unfortunate creature, who still gazed at him with her look of terrified interrogation, became atrocious. Wishing to turn away his eyes, he abruptly felt the sensation of another white form rising up at the foot of the bed. Could this be the double of the murdered woman? Then he recognised Flore. She had already returned, while he had the fever after the accident. Doubtless she was triumphant, at this moment, at being avenged.