“Why have I known you so late!” she said in a low voice.  “I should have wished to love you in my youth, to be beautiful and healthy only for you, to have the beauty and charm of a great lady to soften the rest of your life.  But my gratitude can offer you little, nothing but ill-health; the seeds of death are in me, and slowly I shall fade away.  Gabriel, why did you set your heart on me?”

“Because you are an invalid, and unfortunate as I am.  Our misery is the loving affinity.  Besides, I have never loved like most men.  In my travels I have seen the most beautiful women in the world without the slightest glow of desire.  I am not of an amorous temperament.  From my adventures in Paris when I was young I always returned with a feeling of disgust.  My love for the unfortunate has mastered me to the point of blunting my feelings.  I am like a drunkard or a gambler, who, obsessed by their passion, feel nothing before a woman.  A studious man, buried in his books, feels very little the calls of sex.  My passion is pity for the disinherited, and hatred of injustice and inequality.  It has so entirely absorbed me, enslaving all my faculties, that I have never had time to think of love.  The female does not attract me, but I worship a woman when I see her sad and unfortunate.  Ugliness makes more impression on me than beauty, because it speaks to me of social infamies, it shows me the bitterness of injustice, it is the only wine which revives my strength.  I loved Lucy because she was unfortunate and dying.  I love you, Sagrario, because in your early youth you were a wanderer in life, one whom no one would love.  My love is for you, to brighten what remains to you of life.”

Sagrario leant on Gabriel’s breast.

“How good you are!” she sighed; “what a beautiful soul!”

“Yours is the same, poor Sagrario.  Your life has been a snare.  You sold yourself through hunger and despair as do thousands of others; you thought to find bread in the false pretences of love.  Everything is for the privileged of this world:  the arms of the father, the sex of the daughter, and when those arms are weakened, or the youthful body loses its charms, they are thrown on one side and replaced.  The market is abundant; I love you for your misfortunes.  Had I seen you young and beautiful as in former times, I should not have felt the slightest attraction.  Beauty is a bar to sentiment.  The Sagrario of former times, with her dreams of being a great lady flattered by the words of youthful lovers, brightly dressed like brilliant birds, would never have thought of a vagabond aged by misery, ugly and sick.  We understand each other because we are unfortunate; misery allows us to see into each other’s souls; in full happiness we should never have met.”

“It is true,” she murmured, leaning her head on Gabriel’s shoulder.  “I love that misery which has allowed us to know, each other.”

“You will be my companion,” continued Luna, in a soft tone.  “We will pass our lives together till death breaks the chain.  I will protect you, although the protection of a sick and persecuted man is not worth much.”