itches, and Laurent was obliged to place the lamp on
the table, to avoid letting it fall.

Before putting Madame Raquin to bed they were in the habit of setting
the dining-room in order, of preparing a glass of sugar and water
for the night, of moving hither and thither about the invalid, until
everything was ready.

When they got upstairs on this particular occasion, they sat down an
instant with pale lips, and eyes gazing vaguely before them. Laurent was
the first to break silence:

"Well! Aren't we going to bed?" he inquired, as if he had just started
from a dream.

"Yes, yes, we are going to bed," answered Therese, shivering as though
she felt a violent chill.

She rose and grasped the water decanter.

"Let it be," exclaimed her husband, in a voice that he endeavoured to
render natural, "I will prepare the sugar and water. You attend to your
aunt."

He took the decanter of water from the hands of his wife and poured out
a glassful. Then, turning half round, he emptied the contents of the
small stoneware flagon into the glass at the same time as he dropped a
lump of sugar into it. In the meanwhile, Therese had bent down before
the sideboard, and grasping the kitchen knife sought to slip it into one
of the large pockets hanging from her waist.

At the same moment, a strange sensation which comes as a warning note
of danger, made the married couple instinctively turn their heads. They
looked at one another. Therese perceived the flagon in the hands of
Laurent, and the latter caught sight of the flash of the blade in the
folds of the skirt of his wife.

For a few seconds they examined each other, mute and frigid, the husband
near the table, the wife stooping down before the sideboard. And they
understood. Each of them turned icy cold, on perceiving that both
had the same thought. And they were overcome with pity and horror
at mutually reading the secret design of the other on their agitated
countenances.

Madame Raquin, feeling the catastrophe near at hand, watched them with
piercing, fixed eyes.

Therese and Laurent, all at once, burst into sobs. A supreme crisis
undid them, cast them into the arms of one another, as weak as children.
It seemed to them as if something tender and sweet had awakened in their
breasts. They wept, without uttering a word, thinking of the vile life
they had led, and would still lead, if they were cowardly enough to
live.

Then, at the recollection of the past, they felt so f