adow. At times a fit of terror brought him flat
down on the damp ground: under one of the arches of the bridge he seemed
to see long lines of drowned bodies drifting along in the current. When
weariness drove him home, he shut himself in, and double-locked the
door. There he struggled until daybreak amidst frightful attacks of
fever.

The same nightmare returned persistently: he fancied he fell from
the ardent clasp of Therese into the cold, sticky arms of Camille. He
dreamt, first of all, that his sweetheart was stifling him in a warm
embrace, and then that the corpse of the drowned man pressed him to his
chest in an ice-like strain. These abrupt and alternate sensations of
voluptuousness and disgust, these successive contacts of burning love
and frigid death, set him panting for breath, and caused him to shudder
and gasp in anguish.

Each day, the terror of the lovers increased, each day their attacks of
nightmare crushed and maddened them the more. They no longer relied on
their kisses to drive away insomnia. By prudence, they did not dare
make appointments, but looked forward to their wedding-day as a day of
salvation, to be followed by an untroubled night.

It was their desire for calm slumber that made them wish for their
union. They had hesitated during the hours of indifference, both being
oblivious of the egotistic and impassioned reasons that had urged them
to the crime, and which were now dispelled. It was in vague despair that
they took the supreme resolution to unite openly. At the bottom of their
hearts they were afraid. They had leant, so to say, one on the other
above an unfathomable depth, attracted to it by its horror. They
bent over the abyss together, clinging silently to one another, while
feelings of intense giddiness enfeebled their limbs and gave them
falling madness.

But at the present moment, face to face with their anxious expectation
and timorous desires, they felt the imperative necessity of closing
their eyes, and of dreaming of a future full of amorous felicity and
peaceful enjoyment. The more they trembled one before the other, the
better they foresaw the horror of the abyss to the bottom of which
they were about to plunge, and the more they sought to make promises
of happiness to themselves, and to spread out before their eyes the
invincible facts that fatally led them to marriage.

Therese desired her union with Laurent solely because she was afraid
and wanted a companion. She wa