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,” the girl would say gaily—­“it makes me nervous seeing you so very quiet keeping me company when what you want is life and movement.  Go to your friends; they are expecting you in the bell-ringer’s tower.  They have been talking about me, thinking it is I who keep you in the house.  Go out to walk, uncle!  Go and speak of those things that stir you so much, and that those poor people listen to open-mouthed.  Be careful as you go up the stairs; go slowly and stop often, so that the demon of the cough, may not get hold of you.”