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 Claverias, the Chapel-master played his harmonium.
Gabriel knew the music: it was Beethoven's last lament, the "Must it be," that the great genius sang before his death with a melancholy that made one shiver.
"I love you, Sagrario," continued Gabriel, "ever since I saw you return to this house, bravely facing the odious curiosity of the people around.