knew well, however, that it was not an apparition, that the dead do
not come back, and that his sick soul, his soul possessed by one thought
alone, by an indelible remembrance, was the only cause of his torture,
was what brought the dead girl back to life and raised her form before
his eyes, on which it was ineffaceably imprinted. But he knew, too,
that there was no cure, that he would never escape from the savage
persecution of his memory, and he resolved to die rather than to endure
these tortures any longer.

Then he thought of how he would kill himself, It must be something
simple and natural, which would preclude the idea of suicide. For he
clung to his reputation, to the name bequeathed to him by his ancestors;
and if his death awakened any suspicion people's thoughts might be,
perhaps, directed toward the mysterious crime, toward the murderer who
could not be found, and they would not hesitate to accuse him of the
crime.

A strange idea came into his head, that of allowing himself to be
crushed by the tree at the foot of which he had assassinated little
Louise Roque. So he determined to have the wood cut down and to simulate
an accident. But the beech tree refused to crush his ribs.

Returning to his house, a prey to utter despair, he had snatched up his
revolver, and then did not dare to fire it.

The dinner bell summoned him. He could eat nothing, and he went upstairs
again. And he did not know what to do. Now that he had escaped the first
time, he felt himself a coward. Presently he would be ready, brave,
decided, master of his courage and of his resolution; now he was weak
and feared death as much as he did the dead girl.

He faltered:

"I dare not venture it again--I dare not venture it."

Then he glanced with terror, first at the revolver on the table and next
at the curtain which hid his window. It seemed to him, moreover, that
something horrible would occur as soon as his life was ended. Something?
What? A meeting with her, perhaps. She was watching for him; she was
waiting for him; she was calling him; and it was in order to seize him
in her turn, to draw him toward the doom that would avenge her, and to
lead him to die, that she appeared thus every night.

He began to cry like a child, repeating:

"I will not venture it again--I will not venture it."

Then he fell on his knees and murmured:

"My God! my God!" without believing, nevertheless, in God. And he
no longer dared, in fact, to look