The young man, more troubled and anxious, resumed:

"We have succeeded, Therese; we have broken through all obstacles, and we belong to one another. The future is ours, is it not? A future of tranquil happiness, of satisfied love. Camille is no longer here----"

Laurent ceased speaking. His throat had suddenly become dry, and he was choking, unable to continue. On hearing the name of Camille, Therese received a violent shock. The two murderers contemplated one another, stupefied, pale, and trembling. The yellow gleams of light from the fire continued to dance on ceiling and walls, the soft odour of roses lingered in the air, the crackling of the wood broke the silence with short, sharp reports.

Remembrances were abandoned. The spectre of Camille which had been evoked, came and seated itself between the newly married pair, in front of the flaming fire. Therese and Laurent recognised the cold, damp smell of the drowned man in the warm air they were breathing. They said to themselves that a corpse was there, close to them, and they examined one another without daring to move. Then all the terrible story of their crime was unfolded in their memory. The name of their victim sufficed to fill them with thoughts of the past, to compel them to go through all the anguish of the murder over again. They did not open their lips, but looked at one another, and both at the same time were troubled with the same nightmare, both with their eyes broached the same cruel tale.

This exchange of terrified looks, this mute narration they were about to make to themselves of the murder, caused them keen and intolerable apprehension. The strain on their nerves threatened an attack, they might cry out, perhaps fight. Laurent, to drive away his recollections, violently tore himself from the ecstasy of horror that enthralled him in the gaze of Therese. He took a few strides in the room; he removed his boots and put on slippers; then, returning to his former place, he sat down at the chimney corner, and tried to talk on matters of indifference.

Therese, understanding what he desired, strove to answer his questions.

They chatted about the weather, endeavouring to force on a commonplace conversation. Laurent said the room was warm, and Therese replied that, nevertheless, a draught came from under the small door on the staircase, and both turned in that direction with a sudden shudder. The young man hastened to speak about the roses, the fire, about everything he saw before him. The young woman, with an effort, rejoined in monosyllables, so as not to allow the conversation to drop. They had drawn back from one another, and were giving themselves easy airs, endeavouring to forget whom they were, treating one another as strangers brought together by chance.

But, in spite of themselves, by a strange phenomenon, whilst they uttered these empty phrases, they mutually guessed the thoughts concealed in their ba.n.a.l words. Do what they would, they both thought of Camille. Their eyes continued the story of the past. They still maintained by looks a mute discourse, apart from the conversation they held aloud, which ran haphazard. The words they cast here and there had no signification, being disconnected and contradictory; all their intelligence was bent on the silent exchange of their terrifying recollections.

When Laurent spoke of the roses, or of the fire, of one thing or another, Therese was perfectly well aware that he was reminding her of the struggle in the skiff, of the dull fall of Camille; and, when Therese answered yes or no to an insignificant question, Laurent understood that she said she remembered or did not remember a detail of the crime. They charted it in this manner open-heartedly without needing words, while they spoke aloud of other matters.

Moreover, unconscious of the syllables they p.r.o.nounced, they followed their secret thoughts sentence by sentence; they might abruptly have continued their confidences aloud, without ceasing to understand each other. This sort of divination, this obstinacy of their memory in presenting to themselves without pause, the image of Camille, little by little drove them crazy. They thoroughly well perceived that they guessed the thoughts of one another, and that if they did not hold their tongues, the words would rise of themselves to their mouths, to name the drowned man, and describe the murder. Then they closely pinched their lips and ceased their conversation.

In the overwhelming silence that ensued, the two murderers continued to converse about their victim. It appeared to them that their eyes mutually penetrated their flesh, and buried clear, keen phrases in their bodies. At moments, they fancied they heard themselves speaking aloud.

Their senses changed. Sight became a sort of strange and delicate hearing. They so distinctly read their thoughts upon their countenances, that these thoughts took a peculiarly piercing sound that agitated all their organism. They could not have understood one another better, had they shouted in a heartrending voice:

"We have killed Camille, and his corpse is there, extended between us, making our limbs like ice."

And the terrible confidence continued, more manifest, more resounding, in the calm moist air of the room.

Laurent and Therese had commenced the mute narration from the day of their first interview in the shop. Then the recollections had come one by one in order; they had related their hours of love, their moments of hesitation and anger, the terrible incident of the murder. It was then that they pinched their lips, ceasing to talk of one thing and another, in fear lest they should all at once name Camille without desiring to do so.

But their thoughts failing to cease, had then led them into great distress, into the affrighted period of expectancy following the crime.

They thus came to think of the corpse of the drowned man extended on a slab at the Morgue. Laurent, by a look, told Therese all the horror he had felt, and the latter, driven to extremities, compelled by a hand of iron to part her lips, abruptly continued the conversation aloud:

"You saw him at the Morgue?" she inquired of Laurent without naming Camille.

Laurent looked as if he expected this question. He had been reading it for a moment on the livid face of the young woman.

"Yes," answered he in a choking voice.

The murderers shivered, and drawing nearer the fire, extended their hands towards the flame as if an icy puff of wind had suddenly pa.s.sed through the warm room. For an instant they maintained silence, coiled up like b.a.l.l.s, cowering on their chairs. Then Therese, in a hollow voice, resumed:

"Did he seem to have suffered much?"

Laurent could not answer. He made a terrified gesture as if to put aside some hideous vision, and rising went towards the bed. Then, returning violently with open arms, he advanced towards Therese.

"Kiss me," said he, extending his neck.

Therese had risen, looking quite pale in her nightdress, and stood half thrown back, with her elbow resting on the marble mantelpiece. She gazed at the neck of her husband. On the white skin she had just caught sight of a pink spot. The rush of blood to the head, increased the size of this spot, turning it bright red.

"Kiss me, kiss me," repeated Laurent, his face and neck scarlet.

The young woman threw her head further back, to avoid an embrace, and pressing the tip of her finger on the bite Camille had given her husband, addressed him thus:

"What have you here? I never noticed this wound before."

It seemed to Laurent as if the finger of Therese was boring a hole in his throat. At the contact of this finger, he suddenly started backward, uttering a suppressed cry of pain.

"That," he stammered, "that----"

He hesitated, but he could not lie, and in spite of himself, he told the truth.

"That is the bite Camille gave me. You know, in the boat. It is nothing.

It has healed. Kiss me, kiss me."

And the wretch craned his neck which was burning him. He wanted Therese to kiss the scar, convinced that the lips of this woman would appease the thousand p.r.i.c.ks lacerating his flesh, and with raised chin he presented his extended neck for the embrace. Therese, who was almost lying back on the marble chimney-piece, gave a supreme gesture of disgust, and in a supplicating voice exclaimed:

"Oh! no, not on that part. There is blood."

She sank down on the low chair, trembling, with her forehead between her hands. Laurent remained where he stood for a moment, looking stupid.

Then, all at once, with the clutch of a wild beast, he grasped the head of Therese in his two great hands, and by force brought her lips to the bite he had received from Camille on his neck. For an instant he kept, he crushed, this head of a woman against his skin. Therese had given way, uttering hollow groans. She was choking on the neck of Laurent.

When she had freed herself from his hands, she violently wiped her mouth, and spat in the fire. She had not said a word.

Laurent, ashamed of his brutality, began walking slowly from the bed to the window. Suffering alone--the horrible burn--had made him exact a kiss from Therese, and when her frigid lips met the scorching scar, he felt the pain more acutely. This kiss obtained by violence had just crushed him. The shock had been so painful, that for nothing in the world would he have received another.

He cast his eyes upon the woman with whom he was to live, and who sat shuddering, doubled up before the fire, turning her back to him; and he repeated to himself that he no longer loved this woman, and that she no longer loved him.

For nearly an hour Therese maintained her dejected att.i.tude, while Laurent silently walked backward and forward. Both inwardly acknowledged, with terror, that their pa.s.sion was dead, that they had killed it in killing Camille. The embers on the hearth were gently dying out; a sheet of bright, clear fire shone above the ashes. Little by little, the heat of the room had become stifling; the flowers were fading, making the thick air sickly, with their heavy odour.

Laurent, all at once, had an hallucination. As he turned round, coming from the window to the bed, he saw Camille in a dark corner, between the chimney and wardrobe. The face of his victim looked greenish and distorted, just as he had seen it on the slab at the Morgue. He remained glued to the carpet, fainting, leaning against a piece of furniture for support. At a hollow rattle in his throat, Therese raised her head.

"There, there!" exclaimed Laurent in a terrified tone.

With extended arm, he pointed to the dark corner where he perceived the sinister face of Camille. Therese, infected by his terror, went and pressed against him.

"It is his portrait," she murmured in an undertone, as if the face of her late husband could hear her.

"His portrait?" repeated Laurent, whose hair stood on end.

"Yes, you know, the painting you did," she replied. "My aunt was to have removed it to her room. No doubt she forgot to take it down."

"Really; his portrait," said he.

The murderer had some difficulty in recognising the canvas. In his trouble he forgot that it was he who had drawn those clashing strokes, who had spread on those dirty tints that now terrified him. Terror made him see the picture as it was, vile, wretchedly put together, muddy, displaying the grimacing face of a corpse on a black ground. His own work astonished and crushed him by its atrocious ugliness; particularly the two eyes which seemed floating in soft, yellowish orbits, reminding him exactly of the decomposed eyes of the drowned man at the Morgue.

For a moment, he remained breathless, thinking Therese was telling an untruth to allay his fears. Then he distinguished the frame, and little by little became calm.

"Go and take it down," said he in a very low tone to the young woman.

"Oh! no, I'm afraid," she answered with a shiver.

Laurent began to tremble again. At moments the frame of the picture disappeared, and he only saw the two white eyes giving him a long, steady look.