"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.