incessantly for the moment to reappear.

Then, as evening approached, he was afraid of the shadow falling around
him. He did not yet know why the darkness seemed frightful to him, but he
instinctively feared it, he felt that it was peopled with terrors. The
bright daylight did not lend itself to fears. Things and beings were
visible then, and only natural things and beings could exhibit themselves
in the light of day. But the night, the impenetrable night, thicker than
walls and empty; the infinite night, so black, so vast, in which one
might brush against frightful things; the night, when one feels that a
mysterious terror is wandering, prowling about, appeared to him to
conceal an unknown threatening danger, close beside him.

What was it?

He knew ere long. As he sat in his armchair, rather late one evening when
he could not sleep, he thought he saw the curtain of his window move. He
waited, uneasily, with beating heart. The drapery did not stir; then, all
of a sudden, it moved once more. He did not venture to rise; he no longer
ventured to breathe, and yet he was brave. He had often fought, and he
would have liked to catch thieves in his house.

Was it true that this curtain did move? he asked himself, fearing that
his eyes had deceived him. It was, moreover, such a slight thing, a
gentle flutter of drapery, a kind of trembling in its folds, less than an
undulation caused by the wind.

Renardet sat still, with staring eyes and outstretched neck. He sprang to
his feet abruptly, ashamed of his fear, took four steps, seized the
drapery with both hands and pulled it wide apart. At first he saw nothing
but darkened glass, resembling plates of glittering ink. The night, the
vast, impenetrable night, stretched beyond as far as the invisible
horizon. He remained standing in front of this illimitable shadow, and
suddenly he perceived a light, a moving light, which seemed some distance
away.

Then he put his face close to the window pane, thinking that a person
looking for crabs might be poaching in the Brindille, for it was past
midnight, and this light rose up at the edge of the stream, under the
trees. As he was not yet able to see clearly, Renardet placed his hands
over his eyes, and suddenly this light became an illumination, and he
beheld little Louise Roque naked and bleeding on the moss. He recoiled,
frozen with horror, knocked over his chair and fell over on his back. He
remained there some minutes in anguish