To kill her was better: but to kill her with my own hands--that
was too hard to expect of a poor devil like me, a poor common son of
Adam, after all, and never any sublime self-immolator, as two or three
of them were. And hours I lay there with brows convulsed in an agony,
groaning only those words: 'To kill her! to kill her!' thinking
sometimes that I should be merciful to myself too, and die, and let her
live, and not care, since, after my death, I would not see her suffer,
for the dead know not anything: and to expect me to kill her with my own
hand was a little too much. Yet that one or other of us must die was
perfectly certain, for I knew that I was just on the brink of failing in
my oath, and matters here had reached an obvious crisis: unless we could
make up our minds to part...? putting the width of the earth between
us? That conception occurred to me: and in the turmoil of my thoughts it
seemed a possibility. Finally, about 5 P.M., I resolved upon something:
and first I leapt up, went down and across the house into the arsenal,
chose a small revolver, fitted it with cartridge, took it up-stairs,
lubricated it with lamp-oil, went down and out across the drawbridge,
walked two miles beyond the village, shot the revolver at a tree, found
its action accurate, and started back.
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