darkened by man. The "companion" lived on dry
bread, refusing the help of his comrades only a little less poor than
himself, sleeping on the ground, in order to take her on his next
visit a bunch of flowers.

"She died, Sagrario," groaned Luna, "and I know not where they buried
her; possibly she may have served for a lecture at the school of
anatomy; she fell into the common grave like those soldiers whose
heroism remains in obscurity. But I still see her; she has followed me
in all my misfortunes, and I think she lives again in you."

"But uncle," said Sagrario, gently, touched by his recital, "I cannot
do what she did. I am an unhappy woman, without strength or will."

"Call me Gabriel," said Luna, vehemently. "You are my Lucy, who again
crosses my path; I knew it from the first, and for a long while I have
been searching my feelings, analysing my will, and I have arrived at
one certainty--that I love you, Sagrario."

The young woman made a gesture of surprise, drawing further from him.

"Do not draw away, do not fear me. I am a feeble man, you are a weak
woman; you have suffered much, and have bid good-bye to the joys of
the earth, but you are strong through misfortune and can look the
truth in the face. We are both wrecks of life, and the only hope
left us is to wait and die quietly in the desert island which is our
refuge. We are undone, rent and swept away; Death has laid his hand
upon us; we are fallen and shapeless rags after having passed through
the mills of an absurd society. For this reason I love you, because
you are my equal in misfortune; elective affinity unites us. Poor Lucy
was the work-girl enfeebled by sweating, weakened from her birth by
poverty. You were the girl of the people drawn from her home by the
attraction of the well-being of the privileged; seduced, not by love,
but by the caprices of the happy; the girl offered as a sacrifice to
the Minotaur whose remains were afterwards thrown on to the dunghill.
I love you, Sagrario; we are two fugitives from society, whose paths
must join; I am hated as dangerous, you are despised as an outcast;
misfortune has laid hold on us. Our bodies are weakened and we bear
the wounds of the conquered, but before death claims us, let us make
our lives sweet by love. Let us seek for roses as did poor Lucy."

He pressed the young woman's hands, who, bewildered by Gabriel's
words, knew not what to say, and wept softly. Upstairs, in the upper
storey of the Clav