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By Root 1341 0

of a lion. As he grew calmer, he realized it was the sound of his own breathing. At last! At last he had done it! He had killed! Yes, this was his doing! A sense of unbridled joy, an extraordinary feeling of elation bore him aloft. He savoured the long-awaited fulfilment of his desire. He felt a curious sort of pride, an enhanced sense of his male superiority. He had killed this woman, and he now possessed her as he had so long desired to possess her, totally and utterly, even to the point of destroying her. She was now no more and would never belong to anyone else. He suddenly had a vivid recollection of the other victim of murder, of Grandmorin’s body, which he had seen on that dreadful night only five hundred metres from where he stood now. The delicate body that lay at his feet, its white skin streaked with red, had like Grandmorin been reduced by the single thrust of a knife from a living creature to a tattered shred, a broken puppet, a limp rag. This was what murder was. He had murdered, and his victim lay on the floor. Like Grandmorin, she had fallen over, but on to her back, her legs spread apart, her left arm folded under her body and her right arm twisted and almost wrenched from her shoulder. It was on that night, when the sight of the murdered man had turned his irresistible itch to kill into an all-consuming desire, making his heart beat with excitement, that he had sworn he would one day find the courage to do this thing himself. He must not be a coward. He must follow his instinct. He must take a knife and kill. Without his realizing it, this idea had taken root and gradually grown inside his head. During the last year not a single hour had passed without it bringing him closer to the inevitable; even when he was holding Séverine in his arms and she was kissing him, the deadly process had continued. And now the two murders linked hands; the one was simply the logical outcome of the other.

As he gazed blankly at the dead woman, Jacques was awakened from his musings by a tremendous banging and clattering that sounded through the house and made the floor shake. Was someone breaking the doors open? Had they come to arrest him? He looked out of the window. Outside, nothing stirred. All was quiet. Ah yes, he thought, another train! He suddenly remembered the man who was about to knock on the door downstairs, the man he had been going to kill. He had forgotten all about him. Although he had no regrets, he was already beginning to think that he had acted foolishly. What had happened? The woman he loved, and who passionately loved him, lay dead on the floor, with her throat slit, whilst her husband, the man who had stood in the way of his happiness, was still alive and walking towards him, step by step, out there in the dark. During the last few months, what had spared Roubaud was the sense of right and wrong that Jacques had acquired from his upbringing, a sense of the value of human life that had been gradually passed down from generation to generation. But that night, he had hardly been able to wait for Roubaud to arrive. Then, disregarding all he stood to gain, he had been carried away by an inherited streak of violence, by the same killer instinct that in the primeval forests drove one animal to slay another. There was nothing rational about killing. One was driven to kill by some physical, nervous impulse, a remnant of the primitive struggle for survival, a desire to live and celebrate one’s superior strength. Having gratified his desire, Jacques felt exhausted. He was frightened and tried to understand what had happened; but his gratification left him with only a sense of amazement and deep bitterness that what had been done could not be undone. The sight of his pathetic victim, still staring at him with a look of terror and incomprehension in her eyes, was becoming unbearable. He was about to look away, when he suddenly had the impression that there was another white figure standing at the foot of the bed. Was it the dead woman’s ghost? He looked again and saw that it was Flore. She had come back to him once