."

Luna returned to the meetings in the bell-ringer's house. The greater
part of the morning he sat by his niece, soothed by the tic-tac of the
machine, which caused a gentle drowsiness, watching the cloth pass
under the presser with little jumps, spreading the peculiar chemical
scent of new stuffs.

He watched Sagrario always sad, devoting herself to her work with
taciturn tenacity; when now and then she raised her head to regulate
her cotton and met Gabriel's glance, a faint smile would pass over her
face.

In the isolation in which the anger of her father had left them they
felt obliged to draw together as though a common danger threatened
them, and their bodily infirmities were a further bond of union.
Gabriel pitied the fate of the poor young woman, seeing how hardly the
world had treated her after her flight from the family hearth. Her
long illness had changed her greatly and still caused her pain, her
once beautiful teeth were no longer white and regular, and the lips
were pallid and drawn; her hair had grown thin in places, but she
contrived to conceal this with locks of the auburn hair, remains of
her former beauty, which she dressed with great skill; but in spite
of this her youth was beginning to assert itself, giving light to her
eyes and charm to her smile.

Many nights Gabriel, tossing on his bed unable to sleep, coughing, and
with his head and chest bathed in cold sweat, would hear in the room
adjoining the suppressed moans of his niece, timid and smothered so
that the rest of the household should not be disturbed.

"What was the matter with you last night?" asked Gabriel the following
morning. "What were you moaning for?"

And Sagrario, after many denials, finally admitted her discomfort:

"My bones ache; directly I get to bed the pain begins and I feel as
though my limbs were being torn asunder. And you, how are you? All
night I heard you cough, and I thought you were suffocating."

And the two invalids stricken by life forgot their own aches and pains
to sympathise with those of the other, establishing between their
hearts a current of loving pity, attracted to each other not by the
difference of sex, but by the fraternal sympathy aroused by each
other's misfortunes.

Very often Sagrario would try to send her uncle away; it pained her
to see him sitting close by her, doing nothing, coughing painfully,
fixing his eyes upon her as though she were an object of adoration.

"Get up from here,"