She was silent. The painful story had exhausted her. Her face retained an expression of bewilderment and fright. "My poor Bérangère," I said, "I have done you a great wrong. I have often, far too often, accused you in my heart, without guessing what a wonderful, plucky creature you were." "You could not be expected to understand me." "Why not?" She murmured sadly: "I am Massignac's daughter." "No more of that!" I cried. "You are the one who always sacrificed herself and who always took the risk. And you are also the girl I love, Bérangère, the girl who gave me all her life and all her soul in a kiss. Remember Bérangère . . . the other day in the Yard, when I found you again and when the sight of all those visions of love threw you in my arms. . . ." "I have forgotten nothing," she said, "and I never shall forget." "Then you consent?" Once again she repeated: "I am Massignac's daughter." "Is that the only reason why you refuse me?" "Can you doubt it?" I allowed a moment to pass and said: "So that, if your fate had willed it that you were not Massignac's daughter, you would have consented to be my wife?" "Yes," she said, gravely. The hour had come to speak; and how happy was I to be able to do so. I repeated my sentence: "If fate had willed that you were not Massignac's daughter. . . . Bérangère, did it never occur to you to wonder why there was so little affection between Massignac and you, why, on the contrary, there was so much indifference? When you were a child, the thought of going back to him and living with him used to upset you terribly. All your life was wrapped up in the Yard. All your love went out to Noël Dorgeroux. Don't you think, when all is said, that we are entitled to interpret your girlish feelings and instincts in a special sense?" She looked at me in surprise: "I don't understand," she said. "You don't understand, because you have never thought about these things. For instance, is it natural that the death of the man whom you called your father should give you such an impression of deliverance and relief?" She seemed dazed: "Why do you say, the man whom I called my father?" "Well," I replied, smiling, "I have never seen your birth-certificate. And, as I have no proof of a fact which seems to me improbable . . ." "But," she said, in a changed voice, "you have not the least proof either that it is not so. . . ." "Perhaps I have," I answered. "Oh," said Bérangère, "it would be too terrible to say that and not to let me learn the truth at once!" "Do you know Massignac's writing?" I took a letter from my pocket and handed it to her: "Read this, my darling. It is a letter which Massignac wrote to me and which he handed to me as he lay dying. I read only the first few words to begin with and at once went off in search of you. Read it, Bérangère, and have no doubts: it is the evidence of a dead man." She took the letter and read aloud: