Both avoided saying what made them shudder. When an hallucination brought the countenance of the drowned man before Thérèse, she closed her eyes, keeping her terror to herself, not daring to speak to her husband of her vision, lest she should bring on a still more terrible crisis. And it was just the same with Laurent. When driven to extremities, he, in a fit of despair, accused Thérèse of being afraid of Camille. The name, uttered aloud, occasioned additional anguish. The murderer raved. “Yes, yes,” he stammered, addressing the young woman, “you are afraid of Camille. I can see that plain enough! You are a silly thing, you have no pluck at all. Look here! just go to sleep quietly. Do you think your husband will come and pull you out of bed by the heels, because I happen to be sleeping with you?” This idea that the drowned man might come and pull them out of bed by the heels, made the hair of Laurent stand on end, and he continued with greater violence, while still in the utmost terror himself. “I shall have to take you some night to the cemetery. We will open the coffin Camille is in, and you will see what he looks like! Then you will perhaps cease being afraid. Go on, he doesn’t know we threw him in the water.” Thérèse with her head under the bedclothes, was uttering smothered groans. “We threw him into the water, because he was in our way,” resumed her husband. “And we’ll throw him in again, will we not? Don’t act like a child. Show a little strength. It’s silly to trouble our happiness. You see, my dear, when we are dead and underground, we shall be neither less nor more happy, because we cast an idiot in the Seine, and we shall have freely enjoyed our love which will have been an advantage. Come, give me a kiss.” The young woman kissed him, but she was icy cold, and half crazy, while he shuddered as much as she did. For a fortnight Laurent was asking himself how he could kill Camille again. He had flung him in the water; and yet he was not dead enough, because he came every night to sleep in the bed of Thérèse. While the murderers thought that having committed the crime, they could love one another in peace, their resuscitated victim arrived to make their touch like ice. Thérèse was not a widow. Laurent found that he was mated to a woman who already had a drowned man for husband. CHAPTER XXIII Little by little, Laurent became furiously mad, and resolved to drive Camille from his bed. He had first of all slept with his clothes on, then he had avoided touching Thérèse. In rage and despair, he wanted, at last, to take his wife in his arms, and crush the spectre of his victim rather than leave her to it. This was a superb revolt of brutality.