ust go to sleep quietly. Do you think your
husband will come and pull you out of bed by the heels, because I happen
to be sleeping with you?"

This idea that the drowned man might come and pull them out of bed by
the heels, made the hair of Laurent stand on end, and he continued with
greater violence, while still in the utmost terror himself.

"I shall have to take you some night to the cemetery. We will open the
coffin Camille is in, and you will see what he looks like! Then you will
perhaps cease being afraid. Go on, he doesn't know we threw him in the
water."

Therese with her head under the bedclothes, was uttering smothered
groans.

"We threw him into the water, because he was in our way," resumed her
husband. "And we'll throw him in again, will we not? Don't act like a
child. Show a little strength. It's silly to trouble our happiness. You
see, my dear, when we are dead and underground, we shall be neither less
nor more happy, because we cast an idiot in the Seine, and we shall have
freely enjoyed our love which will have been an advantage. Come, give me
a kiss."

The young woman kissed him, but she was icy cold, and half crazy, while
he shuddered as much as she did.

For a fortnight Laurent was asking himself how he could kill Camille
again. He had flung him in the water; and yet he was not dead enough,
because he came every night to sleep in the bed of Therese. While the
murderers thought that having committed the crime, they could love one
another in peace, their resuscitated victim arrived to make their touch
like ice. Therese was not a widow. Laurent found that he was mated to a
woman who already had a drowned man for husband.

CHAPTER XXIII

Little by little, Laurent became furiously mad, and resolved to drive
Camille from his bed. He had first of all slept with his clothes on,
then he had avoided touching Therese. In rage and despair, he wanted, at
last, to take his wife in his arms, and crush the spectre of his victim
rather than leave her to it. This was a superb revolt of brutality.

The hope that the kisses of Therese would cure him of his insomnia, had
alone brought him into the room of the young woman. When he had found
himself there, in the position of master, he had become a prey to such
atrocious attacks, that it had not even occurred to him to attempt
the cure. And he had remained overwhelmed for three weeks, without
remembering that he had done everything to obtain Therese, and now