And now, as though soothed by her beauty, the hurt man closed his eyes.  Serafina stood beside him anxious and silent, gleaming in that dim place.  The servant at the far end of the chamber still held his one candle high, as though some light of earth were needed against the fantastic moon, which if unopposed would give everything over to magic.  Rodriguez stood there, scarcely breathing.  All was silent.  And then through the door by which Serafina had come, past that lonely, golden, moon-defying candle, all down the long room across moonlight and blackness, came the lady of the house, Serafina’s mother.  She came, as Serafina came, straight toward the man on the couch, giving no look to Rodriguez, walking something as Serafina walked, with the same poise, the same dignity, though the years had carried away from her the grace Serafina had:  so that, though you saw that they were mother and daughter, the elder lady called to mind the lovely things of earth, large gardens at evening, statues dim in the dusk, summer and whatsoever binds us to earthly things; but Serafina turned Rodriguez’ thoughts to the twilight in which he first saw her, and he pictured her native place as far from here, in mellow fields near the moon, wherein she had walked on twilight outlasting any we know, with all delicate things of our fancy, too fair for the rugged earth.

As the lady approached the couch upon which the young man was lying, and still no look was turned towards Rodriguez, his young dreams fled as butterflies sailing high in the heat of June that are suddenly plunged in night by a total eclipse of the sun.  He had never spoken to Serafina, or seen before her mother, and they did not know his name; he knew that he, Rodriguez, had no claim to a welcome.  But his dreams had flocked so much about Serafina’s face, basking so much in her beauty, that they now fell back dying; and when a man’s dreams die what remains, if he lingers awhile behind them?

Rodriguez suddenly felt that his left shoe was off and his right eye still bandaged, things that he had not noticed while his only thought was for the man he carried to shelter, but torturing his consciousness now that he thought of himself.  He opened his lips to explain; but before words came to him, looking at the face of Serafina’s mother, standing now by the couch, he felt that, not knowing how, he had somehow wronged the Penates of this house, or whatever was hid in the dimness of that long chamber, by carrying in this young man there to rest from his hurt.

Rodriguez’ depression arose from these causes, but having arisen, it grew of its own might:  he had had nothing to eat since morning, and in the favouring atmosphere of hunger his depression grew gigantic.  He opened his lips once more to say farewell, was oppressed by all manner of thoughts that held him dumb, and turned away in silence and left the house.  Outside he recovered his mandolin and his shoe.  He was tired with the weariness