On the following evening she sat in her armchair watching the clock.  It had struck eleven—­that was the time for her going to bed, but the hour had become a redoubtable one.  Bedtime filled her with fear, and the thought of another sleepless night deprived her of all courage.  She did not dare to go upstairs.  She sat in her armchair as if in terror of a mortal enemy.  She had hidden the bottle, but her maid had ordered another.  There were now two, sufficient to procure death, said her conscience, and since dinner the temptation to commit suicide had been growing in her brain; like a vulture perched upon a jag of mountain rock, she could see the temptation watching her.  She tried not to see, but the thought grew blacker and larger—­its beak was in her brain, and she was drawn, as if by talons, tremblingly from her chair.  She was so weak that she could hardly cross the room; but the thought of death seemed to give her courage, and without it she thought she never would have had the strength to get upstairs.  The attraction was extraordinary, and her powerlessness to resist it was part of the fascination, and she looked round the room like a victim looking for the knife.  She could not see the bottle on her dressing-table, and accepting this as a favourable omen, she undressed and lay down.

After all, she might sleep without having recourse to death; but, lying on the pillow, she could think of nothing but the slim bottle and the slim blond cork, and a thick white liquid, and the dark river into which she would sink, the winding darkness on which she would float, and she had not strength to think whither it led.  Her only thought was not to see this world any more; her only desire not to think of Ulick or Owen, and to be tortured no longer by doubt of what was right and what was wrong.  She was aware that she was losing possession of her self-control, and would be soon drawn into the dreaded but much-desired abyss; and in this delirium, produced by long insomnia, she began to conceive her suicide as an act of defiance against God, and she rejoiced in her hatred of God, who had afflicted her so cruelly—­for it was hatred that had come to her aid, and would enable her to secure a long, long sleep.  “Out of the sight of this world”—­she muttered the words as she sought the chloral—­“I’ll sleep, I’ll sleep, I must sleep.  Sleep or death, one or the other, so long as I am out of the sight of this world.”  But in her frenzy of desire for sleep she overlooked the slim bottle with the slim blond cork.  Yet it stood on the toilet-table amid other bottles, right under her eyes, but over and over again she passed it by, until, frightened at not finding it, she opened drawer after drawer, and rushed to her wardrobe thinking it might be there.  She sought for it, throwing her things about, and, not finding it anywhere, a cold sweat broke over her forehead.  Another sleepless night and she must go mad.  If she did not find it, she must find another way out of this agony, and the thought of