Misard continued looking at him with pallid face and burning eyes. Then came a sudden flash of enlightenment. "In the salt-box?" he remarked. "By Jove that is an idea! Underneath the drawer there is a place where I have not looked." Hastily settling for his glass of wine, he ran off to the railway station, to see if he could catch the 7.10 train. And yonder in the little low habitation he sought eternally. In the evening after dinner, while waiting for the 12.50 train, Philomène insisted on taking Jacques for a walk down the dark alleys, and out into the adjoining country. The atmosphere was extremely heavy--a hot, moonless July night, that filled her bosom with heavy sighs. On two occasions she fancied she heard footsteps behind them, but on turning round could perceive no one, owing to the dense obscurity. Jacques suffered considerably from this oppressive heat. Notwithstanding his tranquil equilibrium of mind and the perfect health that he enjoyed since the murder, he had just experienced at table a return of that distant uneasiness, each time that this woman grazed him with her wandering hands. This was no doubt due to fatigue, to enervation caused by the heavy atmosphere. The anguish now returned more keenly and was full of secret terror. And yet was he not thoroughly cured? Nevertheless, his excitement became such that in dread of an attack, he would have disengaged his arm had not the darkness surrounding him removed his fears; for never, even on days when he felt the effects of his complaint the most sharply, would he have struck without seeing. All at once, as they came to a grassy slope beside a solitary pathway and sat down, the monstrous craving began again. He flew into a fit of madness, and at first searched in the grass for a weapon, for a stone, to smash her head. Then he sprang to his feet, and was already fleeing in distraction, when he heard a male voice uttering oaths, and making a great disturbance. "Ah! you strumpet!" shouted Pecqueux. "I have waited to the end; I wanted to make sure!" "It is false," answered Philomène. "Let me go!" "Ah! It is false!" said Pecqueux. "He may run, the other one. I know who he is, and shall be able to come up with him. Look there, dare to say again that it is not true!" Jacques tore along in the darkness, not fleeing from Pecqueux whom he had just recognised, but running away from himself, mad with grief.