drowned man.

CHAPTER XVIII

Therese also had been visited by the spectre of Camille, during this
feverish night.

After over a year of indifference, Laurent's sudden attentions had
aroused her senses. As she tossed herself about in insomnia, she had
seen the drowned man rise up before her; like Laurent she had writhed
in terror, and she had said as he had done, that she would no longer be
afraid, that she would no more experience such sufferings, when she had
her sweetheart in her arms.

This man and woman had experienced at the same hour, a sort of nervous
disorder which set them panting with terror. A consanguinity had become
established between them. They shuddered with the same shudder; their
hearts in a kind of poignant friendship, were wrung with the same
anguish. From that moment they had one body and one soul for enjoyment
and suffering.

This communion, this mutual penetration is a psychological and
physiological phenomenon which is often found to exist in beings who
have been brought into violent contact by great nervous shocks.

For over a year, Therese and Laurent lightly bore the chain riveted to
their limbs that united them. In the depression succeeding the acute
crisis of the murder, amidst the feelings of disgust, and the need for
calm and oblivion that had followed, these two convicts might fancy they
were free, that they were no longer shackled together by iron fetters.
The slackened chain dragged on the ground. They reposed, they found
themselves struck with a sort of delightful insensibility, they sought
to love elsewhere, to live in a state of wise equilibrium. But from
the day when urged forward by events, they came to the point of again
exchanging burning sentences, the chain became violently strained, and
they received such a shock, that they felt themselves for ever linked to
one another.

The day following this first attack of nightmare, Therese secretly set
to work to bring about her marriage with Laurent. It was a difficult
task, full of peril. The sweethearts trembled lest they should commit an
imprudence, arouse suspicions, and too abruptly reveal the interest they
had in the death of Camille.

Convinced that they could not mention marriage themselves, they arranged
a very clever plan which consisted in getting Madame Raquin herself, and
the Thursday evening guests, to offer them what they dared not ask for.
It then only became necessary to convey to these worthy people the