"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 Bérangère 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."