Unstable

To Tignonville, if he thought of it at all, the matter was the matter of
an egg, and stopped there. An egg might alleviate the growing pangs of
hunger; its non-appearance was a disappointment, but he traced the matter
no farther. It must be confessed, too, that the haycart was to him only
a haycart--and not an ark; and the sooner he was safely away from it the
better he would be pleased. While La Tribe, lying snug and warm beside
him, thanked God for a lot so different from that of such of his fellows
as had escaped--whom he pictured crouching in dank cellars, or on roof-
trees exposed to the heat by day and the dews by night--the young man
grew more and more restive.

Hunger pricked him, and the meanness of the part he had played moved him
to action. About midnight, resisting the dissuasions of his companion,
he would have sallied out in search of food if the passage of a turbulent
crowd had not warned him that the work of murder was still proceeding. He
curbed himself after that and lay until daylight. But, ill content with
his own conduct, on fire when he thought of his betrothed, he was in no
temper to bear hardship cheerfully or long; and gradually there rose
before his mind the picture of Madame St. Lo's smiling face, and the fair
hair which curled low on the white of her neck.

He would, and he would not. Death that had stalked so near him preached
its solemn sermon. But death and pleasure are never far apart; and at no
time and nowhere have they jostled one another more familiarly than in
that age, wherever the influence of Italy and Italian art and Italian
hopelessness extended. Again, on the one side, La Tribe's example went
for something with his comrade in misfortune; but in the other scale hung
relief from discomfort, with the prospect of a woman's smiles and a
woman's flatteries, of dainty dishes, luxury, and passion. If he went
now, he went to her from the jaws of death, with the glamour of adventure
and peril about him; and the very going into her presence was a lure.
Moreover, if he had been willing while his betrothed was still his, why
not now when he had lost her?