"And if you—"
She looked at him fearful of offending: he was shaking his head. Drawing him aside, she began to talk with him more in confidence.
"You need to, Monsalvat! Please accept part of the ring's value! We all have to live. Don't think us so bad—When I spoke as I did that night, you remember, it was because I knew nothing about life—I too have suffered since then, and now I understand many things...."
Though Monsalvat was unyielding on this point, he shook hands with his callers in far more friendly fashion, and left the building accompanied by Moreno, who could not get over his amazement at what was going on before his eyes. He did not lose much time before offering, unsuccessfully, to sell the ring himself. Monsalvat saw that as a matter of fact these two women like many others of their class were not thoroughly bad as he had believed. If they appeared to disadvantage it was because of the atmosphere of gross selfishness in which they had been brought up, in which they had lived all their lives. The bad in them was not an individual thing inherent in their characters, but the result of prevailing ideas, the collective product of a self-satisfied and unintelligent, rather than unfeeling, society.
They took a street-car going towards the business section of the city. Monsalvat was glad of Moreno's company; for a sudden fit of weakness had come over him. He had scarcely been able to walk the three blocks to the car line, so unsteady were his legs under him. In the tram he felt quite nauseated. Houses and sidewalks were being pushed by some mysterious force out of their true plane, and were rising, sinking, retreating. The car was crowded. Moreno moved forward to find a seat, leaving Monsalvat sitting in the rear of the tram.
They were passing through Piedras Street. At the corner of Méjico, the man beside him rose to give his place to a woman. Monsalvat did not look at her, merely noticing that she was in mourning. In a few moments, however, he felt that she was looking at him. An acquaintance perhaps who had recognized him! And he grew uneasily conscious of his bedraggled appearance. Then he reflected that with his week's growth of beard and his thread-bare coat, his startling emaciation, his whole air of weakness and sickness, he must be quite secure. No one would know him. The thought consoled him, but he turned carelessly towards the window, so as to hide his face.
Suddenly he heard a soft voice murmuring his name. He turned pale, and his hands began to tremble. A whole row of houses plunged several yards into the ground, changing color as they sank. The car seemed to lurch to one side threatening to fall over on itself.
"It's so long since we have seen one another," the voice was saying. "My mother died, and I am living in Tacuarí Street, in our boarding house. I have been there some time. My sister runs the house—and I—"
Monsalvat had regained a more normal state of consciousness, but he said nothing. He could not speak. Nacha's voice was like a music infinitely sweet, echoing in his ears as in a delicious dream, something vague and hazy like a memory from a past beyond any but the vaguest sort of remembering....
Finally he looked into her eyes.