ooking at her. I saw
her glance once at the weapon, and then she fixed her eyes upwards upon
my face: and now that same smile, which had disappeared, was on her lips
again, meaning confidence, meaning disdain.

I waited for her to open her mouth to say something--to stop that
smile--that I might shoot her quick and sudden: and she would not,
knowing that I could not kill her while she was smiling; and suddenly,
all my pity and love for her changed into a strange resentment and rage
against her, for she was purposely making hard for me what I was doing
for her sake: and the bitter thought was in my mind: 'You are nothing to
me: if you want to die, you do your own killing; and I will do my own
killing.' And without one word to her, I strode away, and left her
there.

I see now that this whole drawing of lots was nothing more than a farce:
I never could have killed her, smiling, or no smiling: for to each thing
and man is given a certain strength: and a thing cannot be stronger than
its strength, strive as it may: it is so strong, and no stronger, and
there is an end of the matter.

I walked up to the Grand Bailli's _bureau_, a room about twenty-five
feet from the ground. By this time it was getting pretty dark, but I
could see, by peering, the face of a grandfather's-clock which I had
long since set going, and kept wound. It is on the north side of the
room, over the writing-desk opposite the oriels. It then pointed to
half-past six, and in order to fix some definite moment for the bitter
effort of the mortal act, I said: 'At Seven.' I then locked the door
which opens upon three little steps near the desk, and also the
stair-door; and I began to pace the chamber. There was not a breath of
air here, and I was hot; I seemed to be stifling, tore open my shirt at
the throat, and opened the lower half of the central mullion-space of
one oriel. Some minutes later, at twenty-five to seven, I lit two
candles on the desk, and sat to write to her, the pistol at my right
hand; but I had hardly begun, when I thought that I heard a sound at the
three-step door, which was only four feet to my left: a sound which
resembled a scraping of her slipper; I stole to the door, and crouched,
listening: but I could hear nothing further. I then returned to the
desk, and set to writing, giving her some last directions for her life,
telling her why I died, how I loved her, much better than my own soul,
begging her to love me always, and to live