"Uncle, I must ask you not to insist. Bérangère is a mere child; she does not know what she wants; she is incapable of any serious feeling; and I do not intend to think about her any more. On my part, it was just a fancy of which I shall soon be cured." Noël Dorgeroux shrugged his shoulders: "Lovers' quarrels! Now this is what I have to say to you, Victorien. The work at the Yard will take up all the winter. The amphitheatre will be open to the public on the fourteenth of May, to the day. The Easter holidays will fall a month earlier; and you shall marry my god-daughter during the holidays. Not a word; leave it to me. And leave both your settlements and your prospects to me as well. You can understand, my boy, that, when money is pouring in like water--as it will without a doubt--Victorien Beaugrand will throw up a profession which does not give him sufficient leisure for his private studies and that he will live with me, he and his wife. Yes, I said his wife; and I stick to it. Good-bye, my dear chap, not another word." I walked on. He called me back: "Say good-bye to me, Victorien." He put his arms round me with greater fervour than usual; and I heard him murmur: "Who can tell if we shall ever meet again? At my age! And threatened as I am, too!" I protested. He embraced me yet again: "You're right. I am really talking nonsense. You think of your marriage. Bérangère is a dear, sweet girl. And she loves you. Good-bye and bless you! I'll write to you. Good-bye." * * * * * I confess that Noël Dorgeroux's ambitions, at least in so far as they related to the turning of his discovery to practical account, did not strike me as absurd; and what I have said of the things seen at the Yard will exempt me, I imagine, from stating the reasons for my confidence. For the moment, therefore, I will leave the question aside and say no more of those three haunting eyes or the phantasmal scenes upon the magic screen. But how could I indulge the dreams of the future which Noël Dorgeroux suggested? How could I forget Bérangère's hostile attitude, her ambiguous conduct? True, during the months that followed, I often sought to cling to the delightful memory of the vision which I had surprised and the charming picture of Bérangère bending over me with that soft look in her eyes. But I very soon pulled myself up and cried: "I saw the thing all wrong! What I took for affection and, God forgive me, for love was only the expression of a woman triumphing over a man's abasement! Bérangère does not care for me. The movement that threw her against my shoulder was due to a sort of nervous crisis; and she felt so much ashamed of it that she at once pushed me away and ran indoors. Besides, she had an appointment with that man the very next day and, in order to keep it, let me go without saying good-bye to me." My months of exile therefore were painful months. I wrote to Bérangère in vain. I received no reply.