eyes he could perceive some stars, and he rose, groped his way across
the room, discovered the panes with his outstretched hands, and placed
his forehead close to them. There below, under the trees, lay the body
of the little girl gleaming like phosphorus, lighting up the surrounding
darkness.

Renardet uttered a cry and rushed toward his bed, where he lay till
morning, his head hidden under the pillow.

From that moment his life became intolerable. He passed his days in
apprehension of each succeeding night, and each night the vision came
back again. As soon as he had locked himself up in his room he strove to
resist it, but in vain. An irresistible force lifted him up and pushed
him against the window, as if to call the phantom, and he saw it at
once, lying first in the spot where the crime was committed in the
position in which it had been found.

Then the dead girl rose up and came toward him with little steps just as
the child had done when she came out of the river. She advanced quietly,
passing straight across the grass and over the bed of withered flowers.
Then she rose up in the air toward Renardet's window. She came toward
him as she had come on the day of the crime. And the man recoiled before
the apparition--he retreated to his bed and sank down upon it, knowing
well that the little one had entered the room and that she now was
standing behind the curtain, which presently moved. And until daybreak
he kept staring at this curtain with a fixed glance, ever waiting to see
his victim depart.

But she did not show herself any more; she remained there behind the
curtain, which quivered tremulously now and then.

And Renardet, his fingers clutching the clothes, squeezed them as he had
squeezed the throat of little Louise Roque.

He heard the clock striking the hours, and in the stillness the
pendulum kept ticking in time with the loud beating of his heart. And he
suffered, the wretched man, more than any man had ever suffered before.

Then, as soon as a white streak of light on the ceiling announced the
approaching day, he felt himself free, alone at last, alone in his room;
and he went to sleep. He slept several hours--a restless, feverish sleep
in which he retraced in dreams the horrible vision of the past night.

When he went down to the late breakfast he felt exhausted as after
unusual exertion, and he scarcely ate anything, still haunted as he was
by the fear of what he had seen the night before.

He