Yes, she had the same look; and I could not but remember then that Edith Cavell had also looked in that way at Noël Dorgeroux and me, through the three strange eyes, and that Noël Dorgeroux similarly had recognized the look in his son's eyes before his son himself appeared to him. That being so, was I to assume that each of the films—there is no other word for them—was preceded by the fabulous vision of three geometrical figures containing, captive and alive, the very expression in the eyes of one of the persons about to come to life upon the screen?
It was a lunatic assumption, as were all those which I was making! I blush to write it down. But, in that case, what were the three geometrical figures? A cinema trade-mark? The trade-mark of the Three Eyes? What an absurdity! What madness! And yet . . .
"Oh," said Bérangère, making as if to rise, "I oughtn't to have come! It's suffocating me. Can you explain?"
"No, Bérangère, I can't. It's suffocating me too. Do you want to go?"
"No," she said, leaning forward. "No, I want to see."
And we saw. And, at the very moment when a muffled cry escaped our lips, we saw Noël Dorgeroux slowly making a great sign of the cross.
Opposite him, in the middle of the magic space on the wall, was he himself this time, standing not like a frail and shifting phantom, but like a human being full of movement and life. Yes, Noël Dorgeroux went to and fro before us and before himself, wearing his usual skull-cap, dressed in his long frock-coat. And the setting in which he moved was none other than the Yard, the Yard with its shed, its workshops, its disorder, its heaps of scrap-iron, its stacks of wood, its rows of barrels and its wall, with the rectangle of the serge curtain!
I at once noticed one detail: the serge curtain covered the magic space completely. It was therefore impossible to imagine that this scene, at any rate, had been recorded, absorbed by the screen, which, at that actual moment, must have drawn it from its own substance in order to present that sight to us! It was impossible, because Noël Dorgeroux had his back turned to the wall. It was impossible, because we saw the wall itself and the door of the garden, because the gate was open and because I, in my turn, entered the Yard.
"You! It's you!" gasped Bérangère.
"It's I on the day when your uncle told me to come here," I said, astounded, "the day when I first saw a vision on the screen."