CHAPTER XIX. THE FORMULA
VELMOT dead, Berangere alive: the joy of it! The sudden sense of security! This time, the evil adventure was over, since the girl whom I loved had nothing more to fear. And my thoughts at once harked back to Noel Dorgeroux: the formula in which the great secret was summed up was saved. With the clues and the means of action which existed elsewhere, mankind was now in a position to continue my uncle's work.
Berangere called me back:
« He's dead, isn't he?”
I felt intuitively that I ought not to tell her a truth which was too heavy for her to bear and which she was afraid of hearing and I declared:
“Not at all.... We haven't seen him.... He must have got away....”
My answer seemed to relieve her; and she whispered:
“In any case, he is wounded.... I know I hit him.”
“Rest, my darling,” I said, “and don't worry any more about anything.”
She did as she was told; and she was so weary that she soon fell asleep.
Before taking her home, the count and I went back to the body and lowered it down the slope of the ravine, which we followed to the wall that surrounded the estate. As there was a breach at this spot, the count gave it as his opinion that Velmot could not have entered anywhere but here. And in fact a little lower down, at the entrance to a lonely forest-road we discovered his car. We lifted the body into it, placed the revolver on the seat, drove the car to a distance of half a mile and left it at the entrance to a clearing. We met nobody on the road. The death would beyond a doubt be ascribed to suicide.
An hour later, Berangere, now back to the lodge and lying on her bed, gave me her hand, which I covered with kisses. We were alone, with no more enemies around us. There was no hideous shape prowling in the dark. No one was any longer able to thwart our rightful happiness.
“The nightmare has passed,” I said. “There is no obstacle left between you and me. You will no longer try to run away, will you?”
I watched her with an emotion in which still lingered no small anxiety. Dear little girl, she was still, to me, a creature full of mystery and the unknown; and there were many secrets hidden in the shadowy places of that soul into which I had never entered. I told her as much. She in her turn looked at me for a long time, with her tired and fevered eyes, so different from the careless, laughing eyes which I had loved long ago, and she whispered:
“Secrets? My secrets? No. There is only one secret in me; and that one secret is the cause of everything.”
“May I hear it?”
“I love you.”
I felt a thrill of joy. Often I had experienced a profound intuition of this love of hers, but it had been spoilt by so much distrust, suspicion and resentment. And now Berangere was confessing it to me, gravely and frankly.
“You love me,” I repeated. “You love me. Why did you not tell me earlier? How many misfortunes would have been avoided! Why didn't you?”
“I couldn't.”
“And you can now, because there is no longer any obstacle between us?”
“There is the same obstacle as ever.”
“Which is that?”
“My father.”
I said in a lower voice:
“You know that Theodore Massignac is dead?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then?”
“I am Theodore Massignac's daughter.”
I cried eagerly:
“Berangere, there is something I want to tell you; and I assure you beforehand...”
She interrupted me:
“Please don't say anything more. There's always that between us. It is a gulf which we cannot hope to fill with words.”
She seemed so much exhausted that I made a movement to leave her. She stopped me:
“No,” she said, “don't go. I am not going to be ill... for more than a day or two, at the outside. First of all, I want everything to be quite clear between us; I want you to understand every single thing that I have done. Listen to me....”
“To-morrow, Berangere.”
“No to-day,” she insisted. “I feel a need to tell you at once what I have to say. Nothing will do more to restore my peace of mind. Listen to me....”
She did not have to entreat me long. How could I have wearied of looking at her and listening to her? We had been through such trials when separated from each other that I was afraid, after all, of being parted from her now.
She put her arm round my neck. Her beautiful lips were quivering beneath my eyes. Seeing my gaze fixed upon them, she smiled: