It is warm

"It is warm, and has a muddy taste," he answered. "It's like water from the river."

"Water from the river?" repeated Therese.

And she burst out sobbing. A juncture of ideas had just occurred in her mind.

"Why do you cry?" asked Laurent, who foresaw the answer, and turned pale.

"I cry," sobbed the young woman, "I cry because--you know why--Oh! Great God! Great God! It was you who killed him."

"You lie!" shouted the murderer vehemently, "confess that you lie. If I threw him into the Seine, it was you who urged me to commit the murder."

"I! I!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, you! Don't act the ignorant," he replied, "don't compel me to force you to tell the truth. I want you to confess your crime, to take your share in the murder. It will tranquillise and relieve me."

"But _I_ did not drown Camille," she pleaded.

"Yes, you did, a thousand times yes!" he shouted. "Oh! You feign astonishment and want of memory. Wait a moment, I will recall your recollections."

Rising from table, he bent over the young woman, and with crimson countenance, yelled in her face:

"You were on the river bank, you remember, and I said to you in an undertone: 'I am going to pitch him into the water.' Then you agreed to it, you got into the boat. You see that we murdered him together."

"It is not true," she answered. "I was crazy, I don't know what I did, but I never wanted to kill him. You alone committed the crime."

These denials tortured Laurent. As he had said, the idea of having an accomplice relieved him. Had he dared, he would have attempted to prove to himself that all the horror of the murder fell upon Therese. He more than once felt inclined to beat the young woman, so as to make her confess that she was the more guilty of the two.

He began striding up and down, shouting and raving, followed by the piercing eyes of Madame Raquin.

"Ah! The wretch! The wretch!" he stammered in a choking voice, "she wants to drive me mad. Look, did you not come up to my room one evening, did you not intoxicate me with your caresses to persuade me to rid you of your husband? You told me, when I visited you here, that he displeased you, that he had the odour of a sickly child. Did I think of all this three years ago? Was I a rascal? I was leading the peaceful existence of an upright man, doing no harm to anybody. I would not have killed a fly."

"It was you who killed Camille," repeated Therese with such desperate obstinacy that she made Laurent lose his head.

"No, it was you, I say it was you," he retorted with a terrible burst of rage. "Look here, don't exasperate me, or if you do you'll suffer for it. What, you wretch, have you forgotten everything? You who maddened me with your caresses! Confess that it was all a calculation in your mind, that you hated Camille, and that you had wanted to kill him for a long time. No doubt you took me as a sweetheart, so as to drive me to put an end to him."

"It is not true," said she. "What you relate is monstrous. You have no right to reproach me with my weakness towards you. I can speak in regard to you, as you speak of me. Before I knew you, I was a good woman, who never wronged a soul. If I drove you mad, it was you made me madder still. Listen Laurent, don't let us quarrel. I have too much to reproach you with."