She, too, felt that here was a common cause, and not only that, but she pitied the child with unselfish pity.

"You poor child, you are as cold as ice.

Come in here with me," she whispered.
Maria crept into bed beside her aunt, but she would rather have remained where she was.

She was a child of spiritual rather than physical affinities, and the contact of Aunt Maria's thin body, even though it thrilled with almost maternal affection for her, repelled her.
Aunt Maria began to weep unrestrainedly, with a curious passion and abandonment for a woman of her years.
"Has he come home ?" she whispered.

Aunt Maria's hearing was slightly defective, especially when she was nervously overwrought.
"Yes.