As she sat at the small table, her senses dull to everything, she did not hear a knock at her door; nor was she aware that a man had come in and was there, before her, waiting. A sudden leap of her heart, and a flash of consciousness made her raise her eyes. She thought she must be feverish, in a delirium! She would have cried out, but something within her, that overpowered her, muffled her voice.
"Nacha!" he said.
"Is this true? It is not a dream? Not a dream?"
They were face to face, but they could not speak. No words could express what shone in Monsalvat's eyes, and echoed in Nacha's breathless weeping. The room seemed to fill with memories of the distant past, scenes fraught with sorrow, and ancient longings, taking on a strange, mysterious life, like an old temple that has heard the prayers of centuries.
Nacha's tears were for what had been, and what ought to have been; for what she had not wanted to be, and what the world had forced her to become. Monsalvat sat at her side, caressing her hands; but he saw facing him the two men he had been in his lifetime, and he demanded an account of them for what his life had been, looking into their very souls, cursing them; and before Nacha passed the different women who had dwelt in her body, the bad woman, and the good, the victim and the weakling.
And in that dim light, they understood one another, these two suffering human beings. The light in the heart of each shone out to the other. Their heads drew close together. Without knowing it, without seeking it, they kissed gently, like children of one mother.