Chapter
9
THE MAN WHO EMERGED FROM THE DARKNESS“WHEN THE TIME COMES,” they had said, “some one will emerge from the darkness. When the time comes, some one will remove the mask from his face.”
That face now beamed expansively before me. That some one, who was about to play the game of the two accomplices, was Berangere's father. And the same question continued to suggest itself, each time more painfully than the last:
“What had been Berangere's part in the horrible tragedy?”
There was a long, heavy silence between us. I began to stride across the room and stopped near the chimney, where a dying fire was smouldering. Thence I could see Massignac in a mirror, without his perceiving it; and his face, in repose, surprised me by a gloomy expression which was not unknown to me. I had probab
