“Too late!” he murmured. And as he felt Genevieve’s loosened hair on his hands, he caught it, pressed it passionately to his eyes, his lips. “Flight! Is that really what you counsel me? But where can I possibly fly? Even if I escaped from the police, I could not escape from myself.... And, besides, you would despise me for escaping.” “I! Despise you!” “I lived unconscious; I killed in a dream--a nightmare, in which I have been struggling ever since.” “I will save you from it,” she cried. “What is the use of waking me, if I am to wake a criminal?” He seized her by the arm: “Can’t you understand that the idea of impunity is odious to me? What is there left for me to do--if not to give myself up as soon as it is daybreak?” “You must give yourself up to God, not to man. Even if my father had not said it already, I should say so myself now: Lafcadio, the Church is there to prescribe your penance and to help you back to peace through repentance.” Genevieve is right; most certainly the best thing Lafcadio can do now is to be conveniently submissive; he will realise this sooner or later and that every other issue is closed to him.... Vexatious, though, that that milksop of a Julius should have been the first to tell him so. “Are you repeating that by heart?” said he angrily. “Can it be you speaking like that?” He dropped her arm which he had been holding and pushed it from him; and as Genevieve drew back, there swelled up in him a blind feeling of resentment against Julius, a desire to get Genevieve away from her father, to drag her down, to bring her nearer to himself; as he lowered his eyes he caught the sight of her bare feet in their little silk slippers. “Don’t you understand that it’s not remorse that I’m afraid of, but....” He left the bed, turned away from her and went to the open window; he was stifling; he leant his forehead against the glass pane and cooled his burning palms on the iron balustrade; he would have liked to forget that she was there, that he was near her. “Mademoiselle de Baraglioul, you have done everything that a young lady could be expected to do for a criminal--possibly a little more. I thank you with all my heart. You had better leave me now. Go back to your father, your duties, your habits.... Good-bye. Who can tell whether I shall ever see you again? Consider that when I give myself up to-morrow, it will be to prove myself a little less unworthy of your affection. Consider that.... No, don’t come nearer.... Do you think that a touch of your hand would suffice me?”