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By Root 1449 0

keeping watch day and night. But there was something about Flore that attracted him. Her ways were strange, she had the strength of a man and had once given him a thrashing; yet she only had to lift her little finger and he would come running. Even though he was fourteen years older than her, he still desired her and had sworn he would have her; since force had not succeeded, he had decided he would bide his time and be nice to her. When she came up to his cabin in the dark and called to him to come outside, he left what he was doing and joined her straight away. She led him off towards the fields, trying to distract him with a long, involved account of how her mother was very ill and how she would leave La Croix-de-Maufras if she died. All the time, she was listening to the sound of the express in the distance, as it left Malaunay and sped towards them. When she thought the train had reached the junction, she turned to watch. What she had not taken into account was the new interlocking warning system. As the express ran on to the Dieppe branch line, it automatically set the signal at red,4 and the driver had been able to bring it to a halt a few metres short of the ballast train. Ozil let out a cry as if he had woken up to find his house falling down on top of him and ran back to his cabin. Flore stood in the dark, stiff and motionless, watching as the express was reversed back on to the main line. Two days later, the signalman had called to say goodbye to her. He was being transferred. He still had no idea that Flore had planned a train crash. He asked her to come and see him again once her mother had died. Ah well, she thought, her plan hadn’t worked. She would have to think of something else.

Suddenly, as she recalled this incident, the dreamy mist that floated before her eyes lifted and there in front of her, in the yellow light of the candle flame, she once again saw the dead woman. Her mother was no more. Should she leave and marry Ozil? He wanted her and might make her happy. But her whole being rejected the idea. If she was such a coward that she allowed Jacques and Séverine to go on living, and went on living herself, she would sooner become a tramp or hire herself out as a servant than belong to a man she didn’t love. She heard a strange noise and turned to listen. It was Misard breaking up the earthen floor of the kitchen with a mattock. He was so desperate to get his hands on the hidden treasure that he would have torn the whole house apart. Flore had no desire to continue living with Misard either. What was she to do? There was a sudden rush of wind, the walls of the house shook, and the glow from the firebox of a passing train moved across the dead woman’s white face, making her staring eyes and the sneering grin on her lips turn blood-red. It was the last stopping train from Paris, making its slow, laborious progress towards Le Havre.

Flore turned to gaze at the stars twinkling in the stillness of the spring night.

‘Ten minutes past three! In another five hours it will be their train going past.’

The thought pained her. She must do something to stop them. Seeing them every week on their way to make love was more than she could bear. She couldn’t stand it. Now that she knew she would never have Jacques to herself, she would rather he no longer existed; she would rather that nothing existed any more. This gloomy bedroom, where she sat watching over her mother, filled her with a sense of loss, and a growing longing that everything might be swept clean away. As there was no longer anyone in the world who loved her, everyone else might as well end their days along with her mother. More people were going to die — many more. They would all be taken in one fell swoop. But what was she to do? Her sister was dead, her mother was dead, and her love was at an end. She was alone. Whether she stayed or left, she would always be alone, whereas they would have each other. No! She would put an end to everything. Even now, sitting in that dismal room, she was in the presence of death. Death would lie in wait beside the