When weariness drove him home, he shut himself in, and double-locked the door.

There he struggled until daybreak amidst frightful attacks of fever.
The same nightmare returned persistently: he fancied he fell from the ardent clasp of Therese into the cold, sticky arms of Camille.

He dreamt, first of all, that his sweetheart was stifling him in a warm embrace, and then that the corpse of the drowned man pressed him to his chest in an ice-like strain.

These abrupt and alternate sensations of voluptuousness and disgust, these successive contacts of burning love and frigid death, set him panting for breath, and caused him to shudder and gasp in anguish.
Each day, the terror of the lovers increased, each day their attacks of nightmare crushed and maddened them the more.

They no longer relied on their kisses to drive away insomnia.