Then he went walking up and down once more. Each time he passed the table the gleaming revolver attracted his glance, tempted his hand; but he kept watching the clock, and reflected: "I have still time." It struck half-past six. Then he took up the revolver, opened his mouth wide with a frightful grimace, and stuck the barrel into it, as if he wanted to swallow it. He remained in this position for some seconds without moving, his finger on the lock, then, suddenly, seized with a shudder of horror, he dropped the pistol on the carpet. And he fell back on his arm-chair, sobbing: "I can't. I dare not! My God! My God! How can I have the courage to kill myself?" There was a knock at the door. He rose up in a stupefied condition. A servant said: "Monsieur's dinner is ready." He replied: "All right. I'm going down." Then he picked up the revolver, locked it up again in the drawer, then he looked at himself in the glass over the mantelpiece to see whether his face did not look too much convulsed. It was as red as usual, a little redder perhaps. That was all. He went down, and seated himself before the table. He ate slowly, like a man who wants to drag on the meal, who does not want to be alone with himself. Then he smoked several pipes in the hall while the plates were being removed. After that, he went back to his room. As soon as he was shut up in it, he looked under his bed, opened all his cupboards, explored every corner, rummaged through all the furniture. Then he lighted the tapers over the mantelpiece, and, turning round several times, ran his eye all over the apartment with an anguish of terror that made his face lose its color, for he knew well that he was going to see her, as on every night--Little Louise Roque, the little girl he had violated and afterwards strangled. Every night the odious vision came back again. First, it sounded in his ears like a kind of snorting such as is made by a threshing machine or the distant passage of a train over a bridge. Then he commenced to pant, to feel suffocated, and he had to unbutton his shirt-collar and his belt. He moved about to make his blood circulate, he tried to read, he attempted to sing. It was in vain. His thoughts, in spite of himself, went back to the day of the murder, and made him begin it all over again in all its most secret details, with all the violent emotions he had experienced from the first minute to the last. He had felt on rising up that morning, the morning of the horrible day, a little stupefaction and dizziness which he attributed to the heat, so that he remained in his room till the time came for breakfast. After the meal he had taken a siesta, then, towards the close of the afternoon, he had gone out to breathe the fresh, soothing breeze under the trees in the wood.