He made the
round of the tables, and abruptly again found himself face to face with
the three women. He must have had a doleful and queer expression of
countenance, for all three together burst into merriment.

He made off, returned into the island, threw himself across the coppice
panting. He listened again, listened a long time, for his ears were
singing. At last, however, he believed he heard a little farther off a
little, sharp laugh, which he recognized at once; and he advanced very
quietly, on his knees, removing the branches from his path, his heart
beating so rapidly, that he could no longer breathe.

Two voices murmured some words, the meaning of which he did not
understand, and then they were silent.

Next, he was possessed by a frightful longing to fly, to save himself,
for ever, from this furious passion which threatened his existence. He
was about to return to Chatou and take the train, resolved never to come
back again, never again to see her. But her likeness suddenly rushed in
upon him, and he mentally pictured that moment in the morning when she
would wake in their warm bed, and would press herself coaxingly against
him, throwing her arms around his neck, her hair disheveled, and a little
entangled on the forehead, her eyes still shut and her lips apart ready
to receive the first kiss. The sudden recollection of this morning caress
filled him with frantic recollection and the maddest desire.

The couple began to speak again; and he approached, doubled in two. Then
a faint cry rose from under the branches quite close to him. He advanced
again, always as though in spite of himself, invisibly attracted, without
being conscious of anything ... and he saw them.

And he stood there astounded and distracted, as though he had there
suddenly discovered a corpse, dead and mutilated. Then, in an involuntary
flash of thought, he remembered the little fish whose entrails he had
felt being torn out.... But Madeleine murmured to her companion, in the
same tone in which she had often called him by name, and he was seized
by such a fit of anguish that he fled with all his might.

He struck against two trees, fell over a root, set off again and suddenly
found himself near the river, opposite its rapid branch, which was lit up
by the moon. The torrent-like current made great eddies where the light
played upon it. The high bank dominated the river like a cliff, leaving a
wide obscure zone at its foot where the eddies