Then he, began walking up and down again.  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 trigger.  Then, suddenly seized with a shudder of horror, he dropped the pistol on the carpet.

He fell back on his armchair, sobbing: 

“I cannot.  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, bewildered.  A servant said: 

“Monsieur’s dinner is ready.”

He replied: 

“All right.  I’m coming down.”

Then he picked up the revolver, locked it up again in the drawer and looked at himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece to see whether his face did not look too much troubled.  It was as red as usual, a little redder perhaps.  That was all.  He went down and seated himself at table.

He ate slowly, like a man who wants to prolong the meal, who does not want to be alone.

Then he smoked several pipes in the hall while the table was being cleared.  After that he went back to his room.

As soon as he had locked himself in he looked, under the bed, opened all the closets, explored every corner, rummaged through all the furniture.  Then he lighted the candles on the mantelpiece, and, turning round several times, ran his eye all over the apartment with an anguish of terror that distorted his face, for he knew well that he would see her, as he did every night—­little Louise Roque, the little girl he had attacked and afterward strangled.

Every night the odious vision came back again.  First he seemed to hear a kind of roaring sound, such as is made by a threshing machine or the distant passage of a train over a bridge.  Then he commenced to gasp, to suffocate, and he had to unbutton his 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 that morning, the morning of the horrible day, a little dizziness and headache, which he attributed to the heat, so that he remained in his room until breakfast time.

After the meal he had taken a siesta, then, toward the close of the afternoon, he had gone out to breathe the fresh, soothing breeze under the trees in the wood.