g some seconds behind the willow tree which
concealed him from view. Then, losing his reason entirely, he pushed
aside the branches, rushed on her and seized her in his arms. She fell,
too terrified to offer any resistance, too terror-stricken to cry out.
He seemed possessed, not understanding what he was doing.

He woke from his crime as one wakes from a nightmare. The child burst
out weeping.

"Hold your tongue! Hold your tongue!" he said. "I'll give you money."

But she did not hear him and went on sobbing.

"Come now, hold your tongue! Do hold your tongue! Keep quiet!" he
continued.

She kept shrieking as she tried to free herself. He suddenly realized
that he was ruined, and he caught her by the neck to stop her mouth
from uttering these heartrending, dreadful screams. As she continued to
struggle with the desperate strength of a being who is seeking to fly
from death, he pressed his enormous hands on the little throat swollen
with screaming, and in a few seconds he had strangled her, so furiously
did he grip her. He had not intended to kill her, but only to make her
keep quiet.

Then he stood up, overwhelmed with horror.

She lay before him, her face bleeding and blackened. He was about to
rush away when there sprang up in his agitated soul the mysterious and
undefined instinct that guides all beings in the hour of danger.

He was going to throw the body into the water, but another impulse drove
him toward the clothes, which he made into a small package. Then, as he
had a piece of twine in his pocket, he tied it up and hid it in a deep
portion of the stream, beneath the trunk of a tree that overhung the
Brindille.

Then he went off at a rapid pace, reached the meadows, took a wide turn
in order to show himself to some peasants who dwelt some distance away
at the opposite side of the district, and came back to dine at the usual
hour, telling his servants all that was supposed to have happened during
his walk.

He slept, however, that night; he slept with a heavy, brutish sleep like
the sleep of certain persons condemned to death. He did not open his
eyes until the first glimmer of dawn, and he waited till his usual hour
for riding, so as to excite no suspicion.

Then he had to be present at the inquiry as to the cause of death. He
did so like a somnambulist, in a kind of vision which showed him men
and things as in a dream, in a cloud of intoxication, with that sense
of unreality which perplexes the m