"When I picked her up at la Trascava she was in a high fever."
"But that is not enough; no, not enough to kill her!"
"You say it is not enough. God and Nature say that it is."
"It is as if she had been stabbed."
"Remember what those eyes—now closing forever—saw a short while since. Remember that a blind man loved her and that he is blind no longer; that he has seen her—seen her! The shock was a death-blow...."
"Oh what a terrible mysterious...."
"No, it is no mystery," cried the surgeon, almost wildly. "It is the awful collapse of an illusion; the rude blow of reality; the miserable destroyer which has come between two noble souls. And I—I brought that reality home to them!"
"Oh it is a wretched mystery!" repeated Florentina, not understanding the current of his thoughts.
"A mystery? No," repeated Teodoro with increasing agitation: "It is bare reality; the sudden swallowing up of a whole world of illusions. Reality to him meant a new life—to her, anguish, suffocation, humiliation, sorrow, contempt, an empty life, jealousy,—Death!"
"And all for...."