its damp breath that Mersault sensed at the very moment he began walking away, very fast, without turning back. Suddenly the odour, which he had forgotten, was all around him:
The odour, the fever, forgetting the comb, simple things that happen to all of us are being used to show Mersaults guilt but there is some sort of magnetism about this guilt that he keeps comimg back to, like going to the same street, like staying out all day and not sleeping, like not buying a new comb. All these show how there is a curiosity in guit/feeling strong emotions/death and murder and how that effects someone. Which means that Mersault keeps reliving and coming back to what happened.
