Chapter 3

I

Until the beginning of the following winter Renovales did not return to Madrid. The death of his wife had left him stunned, as if he doubted its reality, as if he felt strange at finding himself alone and master of his actions. Cotoner, seeing that he had no ambition for work and would lie on the couch in the studio with a blank expression on his face, as if he were in a waking dream, interpreted his condition as a deep, silent grief. Besides, it irritated him that as soon as Josephina was dead, the countess began to come to the house frequently to see the master and her dear Milita.

"You ought to go away,"--the old artist advised. "You are free; you will be just as well off anywhere as here. What you need is a long journey; that will take your mind off your trouble."

And Renovales started on his journey with the eagerness of a school-boy, free for the first time from the vigilance of a family. Alone, rich, master of his actions, he believed that he was the happiest being on earth. His daughter had her husband, a family of her own; he saw himself in welcome seclusion, without cares or duties, without any other ties than the constant letters of Concha, which met him on his travels. Oh, happy freedom!

He lived in Holland, studying its museums, which he had never seen: then, with the caprice of a wandering bird, he went down to Italy where he enjoyed several months of easy life, without any work, visiting studios, receiving the honors due a famous master, in the same places where once he had struggled, poor and unknown. Then he moved to Paris, finally attracted by the countess, who was spending the summer at Biarritz with her husband.

Concha's epistolary style grew more urgent. She had numerous objections to a prolongation of the period of their separation. He must come back; he had traveled enough. She could not stand it without seeing him; she loved him; she could not live without him. Besides, as a last resource, she spoke to him of her husband, the count, who, in his eternal blindness, joined in his wife's requests asking her to invite the artist to spend a while at their house in Biarritz. The poor painter must be very sad in his bereavement and the kindly nobleman insisted on consoling him in his loneliness. In his house, they would divert him; they would be a new family for him.

The painter lived for a great part of the summer and all the autumn in the welcome atmosphere of that home which seemed created for him. The servants respected him, seeing in him the true master. The countess, delirious after his long absence, was so reckless that the artist had to restrain her, urging her to be prudent. The noble Count of Alberca was unceasing in his sympathy. Poor friend! Deprived of his companion! And by his expression he shared the horror he felt at the possibility of being left a widower, without that wife who made him so happy.

At the beginning of winter Renovales returned to his house. He did not experience the slightest emotion on entering the three great studios, on passing through those rooms, which seemed more icy, larger, more hollow, now that they were stirred by no other steps than his own. He could not believe that a year had passed. All was the same as if he had been absent for only a few days. Cotoner had taken good care of the house, setting to work the concierge and his wife and the old servant who had charge of cleaning the studios,--the only servants that Renovales had kept. There was no dust, none of the close atmosphere of a house that has long been closed. Everything appeared bright and clean, as if life had not been interrupted in that house. The sun and air had been pouring in the windows, driving out that atmosphere of sickness which Renovales had left when he went away and in which he fancied he could feel the trace of the invisible garb of death.

It was a new house, like the one he had known before in form, but as fresh as a recently constructed building.

Outside of his studio nothing reminded him of his dead wife. He avoided going into her chamber; he did not even ask who had the key. He slept in the room that had formerly been his daughter's in a small, iron bed, delighted to lead a modest, sober life in that princely mansion.

He took breakfast in the dining room at one end of the table, on a napkin, oppressed by the size and luxury of the room which now seemed vast and useless. He looked at the chair beside the fireplace, where the dead woman had often sat. That chair with its open arms seemed to be waiting for her trembling, bird-like little body. But the painter did not feel any emotion. He could not even remember Josephina's face exactly. She had changed so much! The last, that skeleton-like mask, was the one he recalled the best, but he thrust it aside, with the selfishness of a strong, happy man, who does not want to sadden his life with unpleasant memories.

He did not see her picture anywhere in the house. She seemed to have evaporated forever without leaving the least trace of her body on the walls that had so often supported her tottering steps, on the stairways that hardly felt the weight of her feet. Nothing; she was quite forgotten. Within Renovales, the only trace of the long years of their union that remained was an unpleasant feeling, an annoying memory that made him relish all the more his new existence.

His first days in the solitude of the house brought new, intense joys. After luncheon he would lie down on the couch in the studio, watching the blue spirals of cigar smoke. Complete liberty! Alone in the world! Life wholly to himself, without any care or fear. He could go and come without a pair of eyes spying on his actions, without being reproached with bitter words. That little door of the studio, which he used to watch in terror, no longer opened, to let in his enemy. He could close it, shutting out the world; he could open it and summon in a noisy, scandalous stream, all that he fancied--hosts of naked beauties, to paint in a wild bacchanalian rout, strange, black-eyed Oriental girls to dance in morbid abandon on the rugs of the studio, all the disordered illusions of his desire--the monstrous feasts of fancy which he had dreamed of in his days of servitude. He was not sure where he could find all this, he was not very eager to look for it. But the consciousness that he could realize it without any obstacle was enough.

This consciousness of his absolute freedom, instead of urging him into action, kept him in a state of calm, satisfied that he could do everything, without the least desire to try anything. Formerly he used to rage, complaining of his fetters. What things he would do if he were free! What scandals he would cause with his daring! Oh, if he only were not married to a slave of convention who tried to apply rules to his art with the same formality which she had for her calls and her household expenses!

And now that the slave of convention was gone, the artist remained in sleepy comfort, looking like a timid lover, at the canvases he had begun a year before, at his neglected palette, saying with false energy, "This is the last day. To-morrow I will begin."

And the next day, noon came, and with it luncheon, before Renovales had taken up a brush. He read foreign papers, magazines on art, looking up, with professional interest, what the famous painters of Europe were exhibiting or working on. He received a call from some of his humble companions, and in their presence he lamented the insolence of the younger generation, their disrespectful attacks, with the surliness of a famous artist who is getting old and thinks that talent has died out with him and that no one can take his place. Then the drowsiness of digestion seized him, as it did Cotoner, and he submitted to the bliss of short naps, the happiness of doing nothing. His daughter--all the family he had--would receive more than she expected at his death. He had worked enough. Painting, like all the arts, was a pretty deceit, for the advancement of which men strove as if they were mad, until they hated it like death. What folly! It was better to keep calm, enjoying your own life, intoxicated with the simple animal joys, living for life's sake. What good were a few more pictures in those huge palaces filled with canvases, disfigured by the centuries, in which hardly a single stroke was left as the author had made it? What good did it do the human race, which changes its dwelling place every dozen centuries and has seen the proud works of man, built of marble or granite, fall in ruins,--if a certain Renovales produced a few beautiful toys of cloth and colors, which a cigar stub could destroy, or a puff of wind, a drop of water leaking through the wall, might ruin in a few years?

But this pessimistic attitude disappeared when some one called him "Illustrious Master," or when he saw his name in a paper, and a pupil or admirer manifested an interest in his work.

At present he was resting. He had not yet recovered from the shock. Poor Josephina! But he was going to work a great deal; he felt a new strength for works greater than any that he had thus far produced. And after these exclamations, he would be seized with a mad desire for work and would enumerate the pictures he had in mind, dwelling upon their originality. They were bold problems in color, new technical methods that had occurred to him. But these plans never passed the limits of speech, they never reached the brush. The springs of his will, once vibrant and vigorous, seemed broken or rusted. He did not suffer, he did not desire. Death had taken away his fever for work, his artistic restlessness, leaving him in the limbo of comfort and tranquillity.

In the afternoon, when he succeeded in throwing off his comfortable torpor, he went to see his daughter, if she was in Madrid, for she very frequently went with her husband on his automobile trips. Then he ended the afternoon at the Albercas', where he often stayed till midnight.

He dined there almost every day. The count, accustomed to his society, seemed as eager to see him as his wife. He spoke enthusiastically of the portrait which Renovales was painting of him to go with Concha's. He would make more progress when he secured some insignia of foreign orders that were still lacking in his catalogue of honors. And the artist felt a twinge of remorse as he listened to the good gentleman's simplicity, while his wife, with mad recklessness, caressed him with her eyes, leaned toward him as if she were on the point of falling into his arms.

Then, as soon as the husband went away, she would throw her arms about him, hungry for him, defying the curiosity of the servants. Love that was threatened with dangers seemed sweeter to her. And the artist took pride in letting her worship him. He, who at first was the one who implored and pursued, assumed now an air of passive superiority, accepting Concha's homage.

Lacking enthusiasm for work, in order to keep up his reputation Renovales took refuge in the official honors which are granted to respected masters. He put off till the next day the new work, the great work that was to call forth new cries of admiration over his name. He would paint his famous picture of Phryne on a beach, when summer came, and he could retire to the solitary shore, taking with him the perfect beauty to serve as his model. Perhaps he could persuade the countess. Who knows! She smiled with satisfaction every time she heard from his lips the praise of her beauty. But meanwhile the master demanded that people should remember his name for his earlier works, that they should admire him for what he had already produced.

He was irritated at the papers, which extolled the younger generation, remembered him only to mention him in passing, like a consecrated glory, like a man who was dead and had his pictures in the Museo del Prado. He was gnawed with dumb anger, like an actor who is tortured with envy, seeing the stage occupied by others.

He wanted to work; he was going to work immediately. But as time passed, he felt an increasing laziness, which incapacitated him for work, a numbness in his hands, which he concealed even from his most intimate friends, ashamed when he recalled his lightness of touch in the old days.

"This will not last," he said to himself with the confidence of a man who does not doubt his ability.

In one of his fanciful moods, he compared himself with a dog, restless, fierce and aggressive when he is tormented with hunger, but gentle and peaceable when he is surrounded with comforts. He needed his periods of greed and restlessness, when he desired everything, when he could not find peace for his work, and in the midst of his marital troubles attacked the canvas as if it were an enemy, hurling colors on it furiously, in slaps of light. Even after he was rich and famous, he had had something to long for. "If I only were free! If I were master of my time! If I lived alone, without a family, without cares; as a true artist should live!" And now his wishes were fulfilled, he had nothing to hope for, but he was a victim of laziness that amounted to exhaustion, absolutely without desire, as if only wrath and restlessness were for him the internal goad of inspiration.

The longing for fame tormented him; as the days went by and his name was not mentioned, he believed that he had come to an obscure death. He fancied that the youths turned their backs on him, to look in the opposite direction, storing him away among the respected dead, admiring other masters. His artistic pride made him seek opportunities for notoriety, with the guilelessness of a tyro. He, who scoffed so at the official honors and the "sheepfold" of the academies, suddenly remembered that several years before, after one of his successes, they had elected him a member of the Academy of Fine Arts.

Cotoner was astonished to see the importance he began to attach to this unsolicited distinction, at which he had always laughed.

"That was a boy's joking," said the master gravely. "Life cannot always be taken as a laughing matter. We must be serious, Pepe; we are getting on in years, and we must not always make fun of things that are essentially respectable."

Besides, he charged himself with rudeness. Those worthy personages, whom he had often compared with all kinds of animals, no doubt thought it strange that the years went by without his caring to occupy his seat. He must go to the academic reception. And Cotoner, at his bidding, attended to all the details, from taking the news to those worthies, in order that they might set the date for the function, to arranging the speech of the new Academician. For Renovales learned with some misgiving that he must read a speech. He, accustomed to handling the brush and poorly trained in his childhood, took up the pen with timidity, and even in his letters to the Alberca woman preferred to represent his passionate phrases with amusing pictures, to embodying them in words.

The old Bohemian got him out of this difficulty. He knew his Madrid well. The secrets of the world which are detailed in the newspapers had no mysteries for him. Renovales should have as magnificent a speech as any one.

And one afternoon he brought to the studio a certain Isidro Maltrana,[A] a diminutive, ugly young fellow with a huge head, and an air of self-satisfaction and boldness that disgusted Renovales from the very first. He was well dressed but the lapels of his coat were dirty with ashes, and its collar was strewn with dandruff. The painter observed that he smelt of wine. At first he pompously styled him master, but after a few words he called him by name with disconcerting familiarity. He moved about the studio as if it were his own, as if he had spent his whole life in it, indifferent to its beautiful decorations.

It would not be any trouble for him to undertake the preparation of a speech. That was his specialty. Academic receptions and works for members of Congress were his best field. He understood that the master needed him--a painter!

And Renovales, who was beginning to find this Maltrana fellow attractive in spite of his insolence, drew himself up to his full height in the majesty of his fame. If it was a question of doing a picture for admission, he was the man. But a speech!

"Agreed: you shall have the speech," said Maltrana. "It's an easy matter, I know the recipe. We shall speak of the holy traditions of the past, we shall despise certain daring innovations on the part of the inexperienced youth, which were perfectly proper twenty years ago, when you were beginning, but which now are out of place. Do you care for a thrust at modernism?"

Renovales smiled, enchanted at the frankness with which this young fellow spoke of his task, and he moved one hand to suggest a balance. "Man alive! Like this. A just mean is what we want."

"Of course, Renovales; flatter the old men and not quarrel with the young. You are a real master. You will be pleased with my work."

With the calmness of a shopkeeper, before the artist had a chance to speak of the charge, he broached the matter. It would be two thousand _reales_; he had already told Cotoner. The low tariff; the one he set for people he liked.

"A man must live, Renovales. I have a son."

And his voice grew serious as he said this; his face, ugly and cynical, became noble for a moment, reflecting the cares of paternal love.

"A son, dear master, for whom I do anything that turns up. If it is necessary I will steal. He is the only thing I have in the world. His mother died in misery in the hospital. I dreamt of being something, but you can't think of nonsense when you have a baby. Between the hope of being famous and the certainty of eating--eating is the first."

But his tenderness was not of long duration. He recovered the cold, mercenary expression of a man who goes through life in an armor of cynicism, disillusioned by misfortune, setting a price on all his acts. They agreed on the sum; he should receive it when he handed over the speech.

"And if you print it, as I hope," he said as he went away, "I will read the proof without any extra charge. Of course that is a special favor to you, because I am one of your admirers."

Renovales spent several weeks in the preparations for his reception, as if it were the most important event in his life. The countess also took a great interest in the matter. She would see to it that it was a distinguished function, something like the receptions of the French Academy, described in the papers or in novels. All of her friends would be present. The great painter would read his speech, the cynosure of a hundred interested eyes, amid the fluttering of fans and the buzz of conversation. An immense success which would enrage many artists who were eager to get a foothold in high society.

A few days before the function, Cotoner handed him a bundle of papers. It was a copy of the speech,--in a fair hand; it was already paid for. And Renovales, with the instinct of an actor anxious to make a good show, spent an afternoon, striding from studio to studio, with the manuscript in one hand and making energetic gestures with the other, while he read the paragraphs aloud. That impudent Maltrana was gifted! It was a work that filled the simple artist with enthusiasm, in his ignorance of everything except printing, a series of glorious trumpet blasts, in which were scattered names, many names; appreciations in tremulous rhetoric, historical summaries, so well rounded, so complete that it seemed as though mankind had been living since the beginning of the world with no other thought than Renovates' speech, and judging its acts in order that he might give them a definite interpretation.

The artist felt a thrill of elevation as he repeated in eloquent succession Greek names, many of which were mere sounds to him, for he was not certain whether they were great sculptors or tragic poets. Again, he experienced a sensation of self-satisfaction when he encountered the names of Dante and Shakespeare. He knew that they had not painted, but they ought to appear in every speech which was worthy of respect. And when he came to the paragraphs on modern art, he seemed to touch terra firma, and smiled with a superior air. Maltrana did not know much about that subject; superficial appreciation of a layman; but he wrote well, very well; he could not have done better himself. And he studied his speech, till he could repeat whole paragraphs by heart, paying particular attention to the pronunciation of the difficult names, taking lessons from his most cultured friends.

"It is for appearance's sake," he said naïvely. "It is because I don't want people to poke fun at me, even if I am only a painter."

The day of the reception he had luncheon long before noon. He scarcely touched the food; this ceremony, which he had never seen, made him rather worried. To his anxiety was added the irritation he always felt when he had to attend to the care of his person.

His long years of married life had accustomed him to neglect all the trivial, everyday needs of life. If he had to appear in different clothes than usual, the hands of his wife and daughter deftly arranged them for him. Even at the times of greatest ill-feeling, when he and Josephina hardly spoke to each other, he noticed around him the scrupulous order of that excellent housekeeper who removed all obstacles from his way, relieving him of the ordinary cares of life.

Cotoner was away; the servant had gone to the countess's to take her some invitations which she had asked for, at the last minute, for some friends. Renovales decided to dress alone. His son-in-law and daughter were going to come for him at two. López de Sosa had insisted on taking him to the Academy in his car, seeking, no doubt, by this a little ray of the splendor of official glory that was to be showered on his father-in-law.

Renovales dressed himself, after struggling with the many difficulties that arose from his lack of habit. He was as awkward as a child without his mother's help. When at last he looked at himself in the mirror, with his dress coat on and his cravat neatly tied, he heaved a sigh of relief. At last! Now the insignia--the ribbon. Where could he find those honorary trinkets? Since Milita's wedding he had not had them on, the poor departed had put them away. Where could he find them? And hastily, fearing the time would go by and his children would surprise him before he finished the decoration of his person, out of breath, swearing with impatience, wandering around in hopeless confusion, unable to remember anything definitely, he entered the room his wife had used as a wardrobe. Perhaps she had put away his insignia there. He opened the doors of the great clothes-closets with a nervous pull. Clothes! Nothing but clothes.

The odor of balsam, which made him think of the silent calm of the woods, was mingled with a subtle, mysterious perfume, a perfume of years gone by, of dead beauties, of forgotten memories, like the fragrance of dried flowers. This odor came from the mass of clothes that hung there, white, black, pink and blue dresses, with their colors dull and indistinct, the lace crumpled and yellow, retaining in their folds something of the living fragrance of the form they once had covered. The whole past of the dead woman was there. With superstitious care, she had stored away the gowns of the different periods of her life, as if she had been afraid to get rid of them, to tear out a part of her life.

As the painter looked at some of these gowns, he felt the same emotion as if they were old friends who had suddenly appeared like an unexpected surprise. A pink skirt recalled the happy days in Rome; a blue suit brought to his memory the Piazza di san Marco, and he thought he heard the fluttering of the doves and the distant rumble of the noisy _Ride of the Valkyries_. The dark, cheap suits that belonged to the cruel days of struggle hung at the back of the closet, like the garb of suffering and sacrifice. A straw hat, bright as a summer wood, covered with red flowers and with cherries, seemed to smile to him from a shelf. Oh, he knew that too! Many a time its sharp edge of straw had stuck into his forehead, when at sunset on the roads of the Roman Compagna he used to bend down, with his arm around his little wife's waist, to kiss her lips that trembled softly, while from the distance in the blue mist came the tinkle of the bells of the flocks and the mournful songs of the drivers.

That youthful perfume, grown old in its confinement, which poured from the closets in waves, with the rush of an old wine that escapes from the dusty bottle in spurts, spoke to him of the past, calling up the joys that were dead. His senses trembled, a subtle intoxication crept over him. He fancied he had fallen into a sea of perfume that buffeted him with its waves, playing with him as if he were an inert body. It was the scent of youth that came back to him; the incense of the happy days, fainter, more subtle with the regret of dead years. It was the perfume of her beauty which one night in Rome had made him sigh admiringly.

"I worship you, Josephina. You are as fair as Goya's little _Maja_. You are the _Maja Desnuda_."

Holding his breath like a swimmer, he delved into the depths of the closets, reaching out his hands greedily, yet eager to get out of there, to return, as soon as he could, to the surface, to the pure air. He came upon card-board boxes, bundles of belts and old lace, without finding what he was seeking. And every time that his trembling arms shook the old clothes, the swinging of the skirts seemed to throw in his face a wave of that dead, indefinable perfume which he breathed more with his fancy than with his senses.

He wanted to get out as soon as possible. The insignia were not in the wardrobe. Perhaps he would find them in the chamber. And for the first time since the death of his wife, he ventured to turn the door key. The perfume of the past seemed to go with him; it had penetrated through all the pores of his body. He fancied he felt the pressure of a pair of distant, enormous arms, that came from the infinite. He was no longer afraid to enter the chamber.

He groped his way, looking for one of the windows. When the shutters creaked and the sunlight rushed in, the painter's eyes, after a moment of blinking, saw, like a sweet, faint smile, the glow of the Venetian furniture.

What a beautiful artistic chamber! After a year of absence, the painter admired the great clothes-press with its three mirrors, deep and blue as only the mirror-makers of Murano could make them and the ebony of the furniture inlaid with tiny bits of pearl and bright jewels, a specimen of the artistic genius of ancient Venice in contact with Oriental peoples. This furniture had been for Renovales one of the great undertakings of his youth; the whim of a lover, eager to bestow princely honors on his companion after years of strict economy.

They had always had their luxurious bedroom wherever they were, even at the time of their poverty. In those hard days when he painted in the attic and Josephina did the cooking, they had no chairs, they ate from the same plate; Milita played with rag-dolls; but in their miserable, whitewashed alcove were piled up with sacred respect all that furniture of the fair-haired wife of some Doge, like a hope for the future, a promise of better times. She, poor woman, with her simple faith, cleaned it, worshiped it, waiting for the hour of magic transformation to move them to a palace.

The painter glanced about the chamber calmly. He found nothing unusual there, nothing that moved him. Cotoner had prudently hidden the chair in which Josephina died.

The princely bed, with its monumental head and foot of carved ebony and brilliant mosaic, looked vulgar with the mattresses piled in a heap. Renovales laughed at the terror which had so often made him stop in front of the locked door. Death had left no trace. Nothing there reminded him of Josephina. In the atmosphere floated that smell of closeness, that odor of dust and dampness which one finds in all rooms that have long been closed.

The time was passing, the insignia must be found, and Renovales, already accustomed to the room, opened the clothes-press, expecting to find them in it.

There, too, the wood seemed to scatter, as he opened the door, a perfume like that of the other room. It was fainter, more vague, more distant.

Renovales thought it was an illusion of his senses. But no; from the depths of the clothes-press came an invisible vapor wrapping him in its caressing breath. There were no clothes there. His eyes recognized immediately in the bottom of a compartment the boxes he was looking for; but he did not reach out his hands for them; he stood motionless, lost in the contemplation of a thousand trivial objects that reminded him of Josephina.

She was there, too; she came forth to meet him, more personal, more real than from among the heap of old clothes. Her gloves seemed to preserve the warmth and the outline of those hands which once had run caressingly through the artist's hair, her collars reminded him of her warm ivory neck where he used to place his kisses.

His hands turned over everything with painful curiosity. An old fan, carefully put away, seemed to move him in spite of its sorry appearance. Among its broken folds he could see a trace of old colors--a head he had painted when his wife was only a friend--a gift for Señorita de Torrealta who wanted to have something done by the young artist. At the bottom of a case shone two huge pearls, surrounded by diamonds; a present from Milan, the first jewel of real worth which he had bought for his wife, as they were walking through the Piazza del Duomo; a whole remittance from his manager in Rome invested in this costly trinket which made the little woman flush with pleasure while her eyes rested on him with intense gratitude.

His eager fingers, as they turned over boxes, belts, handkerchiefs and gloves, came upon souvenirs with which her person was forever connected. That poor woman had lived for him, only for him, as if her own existence were nothing, as if it had no meaning unless it were joined with his. He found carefully put away among belts and band-boxes--photographs of the places where she had spent her youth; the buildings of Rome; the mountains of the old Papal States, the canals of Venice--relics of the past which no doubt were of great value to her because they called up the image of her husband. And among these papers he saw dry, crushed flowers, proud roses, or modest wild flowers, withered leaves, nameless souvenirs whose importance Renovales realized, suspecting that they recalled some happy moment completely forgotten by him.

The artist's portraits, at different ages, rose from all the corners, entangled among belts or buried under the piles of handkerchiefs. Then several bundles of letters appeared, the ink reddened with time, written in a hand that made the artist uneasy. He recognized it; it was dimly associated in his memory with some person whose name had escaped him. Fool! It was his own handwriting, the laborious heavy hand of his youth which was dexterous only with the brush. There in those yellow folds was the whole story of his life, his intellectual efforts to say "pretty things" like men who write. Not one was missing; the letters of their early engagement when, after they had seen and talked to each other, they still felt that they must put on paper what their lips did not venture to say; others with Italian stamps, exuberant with extravagant expressions of love, short notes he sent her when he was going to spend a few days with some other artists at Naples, or to visit some dead city in the Marcha; then the letters from Paris to the old Venetian palace, inquiring anxiously for the little girl, asking about the nursing, trembling with fear at the possibility of the inevitable diseases of childhood.

Not one was lacking; all were there, put away like fetishes, perfumed with love, tied up with ribbons like the balsam and swathings of a mummified life. Her letters had had a different fate, her written love had been scattered, lost in the void. They had been left forgotten in old suits, burned in the fireplaces, or had fallen into strange hands, where they provoked laughter at their tender simplicity. The only letters he kept were a few of the other woman's and, as he thought of this, he was seized with remorse, with infinite shame at his evil doings.

He read the first lines of some of them, with a strange feeling, as if they were written by another man, wondering at their passionate tone. And it was he who had written that! How he loved Josephina then! It did not seem possible that this affection could have ended so coldly. He was surprised at the indifference of the last years; he no longer remembered the troubles of their life together; he saw his wife now as she was in her youth, with her calm face, her quiet smile and admiration in her eyes.

He continued to read, passing eagerly from letter to letter. He wondered at his own youth, virtuous in spite of his passionate nature, at the chastity of his devotion to his wife, the only, the unquestionable one. He experienced the joy, tinged with melancholy, which a decrepit old man feels at the contemplation of his youthful portrait. And he had been like that! From the bottom of his soul, a stern voice seemed to rise in a reproachful tone, "Yes, like that, when you were good, when you were honorable."

He became so absorbed in his reading that he did not notice the lapse of time. Suddenly he heard steps in the distant hallway, the rustle of skirts, his daughter's voice. Outside the house a horn was tooting; his haughty son-in-law telling him to hurry; trembling with fear at the prospect of being discovered, he took the insignia and the ribbons out of their cases and hastily closed the door of the clothes-press.

The reception of the Academy was almost a failure for Renovales. The countess found him very interesting, with his face pale with excitement, his breast starred with jewels and his shirt front cut with several bright lines of colors. But as soon as he stood up amid general curiosity, with his manuscript in his hand, and began to read the first paragraphs, a murmur arose which kept increasing and finally drowned out his voice. He read thickly, with the haste of a school-boy who wants to have it over, without noticing what he was saying, in a monotonous sing-song. The sonorous rehearsals in the studio, the careful preparation of dramatic gestures was forgotten. His mind seemed to be somewhere else, far away from that ceremony; his eyes saw nothing but the letters. The fashionable assemblage went out, glad they had gathered and seen each other again. Many lips laughed at the speech behind their gauze fans, delighted to be able to scratch indirectly his friend the Alberca woman.

"Awful, my dear! Insufferably boring!"

II

As soon as he awoke the next day, Renovales felt that he must have open air, light, space, and he went out of the house, not stopping in his walk, up the Castellana, until he reached the clearing near the Exhibition Hall.

The night before he had dined at the Albercas'--almost a formal banquet in honor of his entrance into the Academy, at which many of the distinguished gentlemen who formed the countess's coterie were present. She seemed radiant with joy, as if she were celebrating a triumph of her own. The count treated the famous master with greater respect than ever; he had just advanced another step in glory. His respect for all honorary distinctions made him admire that Academic medal, the only distinction he could not add to his load of insignia.

Renovales spent a bad night. The countess's champagne did not agree with him. He had gone home with a sort of fear, as if something unusual was awaiting him which his uneasiness could not explain. He took off the dress clothes which had been torturing him for several hours and went to bed, surprised at the vague fear that followed him even to the threshhold of his room. He saw nothing unusual around him, his room presented the same appearance it always did. He feel asleep, overcome by weariness, by the digestive torpor of that extraordinary banquet, and he did not awake at all during the night; but his sleep was cruel, tossed with dreams that perhaps made him groan.

On awakening, late in the morning, at the steps of his servant in the dressing room, he realized by the tumbled condition of the bed-clothes, by the cold sweat on his forehead and the weariness of his body what a restless night he had passed amid nervous starts.

His brain, still heavy with sleep, could not unravel the memories of the night. He knew only that he had had unpleasant dreams; perhaps he had wept. The one thing he could recall was a pale face, rising from among the black veils of unconsciousness, around which all his dreams were centered. It was not Josephina; the face had the expression of a person of another world.

But as his mental numbness gradually disappeared, while he was washing and dressing, and while the servant was helping him on with his overcoat, he thought, summoning his memories with an effort, that it might be she. Yes, it was she. Now he remembered that in his dream he had been conscious of that perfume which had followed him since the day before, which accompanied him to the Academy, disturbing his reading, and which had gone with him to the banquet, running between his eyes and Concha's like a mist, through which he looked at her, without seeing her.

The coolness of the morning cleared his mind. The wide prospect from the heights of the Exhibition Hall seemed to blot out instantly the memories of the night.

A wind from the mountains was blowing on the plateau near the Hippodrome. As he walked against the wind, he felt a buzz in his ears, like the distant roar of the sea. In the background, beyond the slopes with their little red houses and wintry poplars, bare as broomsticks, the mountains of Guadarrama stood out, luminously clear against the blue sky, with their snowy crests and their huge peaks which seemed made of salt. In the opposite direction, sunk in a deep cut, appeared the covering of Madrid; the black roofs, the pointed towers--all indistinct in a haze that gave the buildings in the background the vague blue of the mountains.

The plateau, covered with wretched, thin grass, its furrows stiffly frozen, flashed here and there in the sunlight. The bits of tile on the ground, broken pieces of china and tin cans reflected the light as if they were precious metals.

Renovales looked for a long while at the back of the Exhibition Palace; the yellow walls trimmed with red brick which hardly rose above the edge of the clearing; the flat zinc roofs, shining like dead seas; the central cupola, huge, swollen, cutting the sky with its black curves, like a balloon on the point of rising. From one wing of the Palace came the sound of bugles, prolonging their warlike notes to the accompaniment of the hoofbeats amid clouds of dust. Beside one door swords were flashing and the sun was reflected on patent-leather hats.

The painter smiled. That palace had been erected for them, and now the rural police occupied it. Once every two years Art entered it, claiming the place from the horses of the guardians of peace. Statues were set up in rooms that smelt of oats and stout shoes. But this anomaly did not last long; the intruder was driven out, as soon as the place was beginning to have a semblance of European culture, and there remained in the Exhibition Palace the true, the national, the privileged police, the sorry jades of holy authority which galloped down to the streets of Madrid when its slothful peace was at rare intervals disturbed.

As the master looked at the black cupola, he remembered the days of exhibitions; he saw the long-haired, anxious youths, now gentle and flattering, now angry and iconoclastic, coming from all the cities of Spain with their pictures under their arms and mighty ambitions in their minds. He smiled at the thought of the unpleasantness and disgust he had suffered under that roof, when the turbulent throng of artists crowded around him, annoyed him, admiring him more because of his position as an influential judge than because of his works. It was he who awarded the prizes in the opinion of those young fellows who followed him with looks of fear and hope. On the afternoon when the prizes were awarded, groups rushed out to meet him in the portico at the news of his arrival; they greeted him with extravagant demonstrations of respect. Some walked in front of him, talking loudly. "Who? Renovales? The greatest painter in the world. Next to Velásquez." And at the end of the afternoon, when the two sheets of paper were placed on the columns of the rotunda, with the lists of winners, the master prudently slipped out to avoid the final explosion. The childish soul that every artist has within him burst out frankly at the announcement. False pretences were over; every man showed his true nature. Some hid between the statues, dejected and ashamed, with their fists in their eyes, weeping at the thought of the return to their distant home, of the long misery they had suffered with no other hope than that which had just vanished. Others stood straight as roosters, their ears red, their lips pale, looking toward the entrance of the palace with flaming eyes, as if they wanted to see from there a certain pretentious house with a Greek façade and a gold inscription. "The fossil! It is a shame that the fortunes of the younger men, who really amount to something, are entrusted to an old fogey who has run out, a 'four-flusher' who will never leave anything worth while behind him!" Oh, from those moments had arisen all the annoyances of his artistic activity. Every time that he heard of an unjust censure, a brutal denial of his ability, a merciless attack in some obscure paper, he remembered the rotunda of the Exhibition, that stormy crowd of painters around the bits of paper which contained their sentences. He thought with wonder and sympathy of the blindness of those youths who cursed life because of a failure, and were capable of giving their health, their vigor, in exchange for the sorry glory of a picture, less lasting even than the frail canvas. Every medal was a rung on the ladder; they measured the importance of these awards, giving them a meaning like that of a soldier's stripes. And he too had been young! He too had embittered the best years of his life in these combats, like amoebæ who struggle together in a drop of water, fancying they may conquer a huge world! What interest had eternal beauty in these regimental ambitions, in this ladder-climbing fever of those who strove to be her interpreters?

The master went home. The walk had made him forget his anxiety of the night before. His body, weakened by his easy life, seemed to acknowledge this exercise with a violent reaction. His legs itched slightly, the blood throbbed in his temples, it seemed to spread through his body in a wave of warmth. He exulted in his power and tasted the joy of every organism that is performing its functions in harmonious regularity.

As he crossed the garden, he was humming a song. He smiled to the concierge's wife who had opened the gate for him and to the ugly watchdog who came up with a caressing whine to lick his trousers. He opened the glass door, passing from the noise outside into deep, convent-like silence. His feet sank in the soft rugs; the only sounds were the mysterious trembling of the pictures which covered the walls up to the ceiling, the creaking of invisible wood-borers in the picture frames, the swing of the hangings in a breath of air. Everything that the master had painted; studies or whims, finished or unfinished, was placed on the ground floor, together with pictures and drawings by some famous companions or favorite pupils. Milita had amused herself for a long time before she was married, in this decoration which reached even to poorly lighted hallways.

As he left his hat and stick on the hat-rack, the eyes of the master fell on a nearby water-color, as if this picture attracted his attention among the others which surrounded it. He was surprised that he should now notice it of a sudden, after passing by it so many times without seeing it. It was not bad; but it was timid; it showed lack of experience. Whose could it be? Perhaps Soldevilla's. But as he drew near to see it better, he smiled. It was his own! How differently he painted then! He tried to remember when and where he had painted it. To help his memory, he looked closely at that charming woman's head, with its dreamy eyes, wondering who the model could have been.

Suddenly a cloud came over his face. The artist seemed confused, ashamed. How stupid! It was his wife, the Josephina of the early days, when he used to gaze at her admiringly, delighting in reproducing her face.

He threw the blame for his slowness on Milita and determined to have the study taken away from there. His wife's portrait ought not be in the hall, beside the hat-rack.

After luncheon he gave orders to the servant to take down the picture and move it into one of the drawing-rooms. The servant looked surprised.

"There are so many portraits of the mistress. You have painted her so many times, sir. The house is full."

Renovales mimicked the servant's expression. "So many! So many!" He knew how many times he had painted her! With a sudden curiosity before going to the studio, he entered the parlor where Josephina received her callers. There, in the place of honor, he saw a large portrait of his wife, painted in Rome, a dainty woman with a lace mantilla, a black ruffled skirt and, in her hand, a tortoise-shell fan--a veritable Goya. He gazed for a moment at that attractive face, shaded by the black lace, its oriental eyes in sharp contrast to its aristocratic pallor. How beautiful Josephina was in those days!

He opened the windows the better to see the portrait and the light fell on the dark red walls making the frames of other smaller pictures flash.

Then the painter saw that the Goyesque picture was not the only one. Other Josephinas accompanied him in the solitude. He gazed with astonishment at the face of his wife, which seemed to rise from all sides of the parlor. Little studies of women of the people or ladies of the 18th century; water-colors of Moorish women; Greek women with the stiff severity of Alma-Tadema's archaic figures; everything in the parlor, everything he had painted, was Josephina, had her face, or showed traces of her with the vagueness of a memory.

He passed to the adjoining parlor and there, too, his wife's face, painted by him, came to meet him among other pictures by his friends.

When had he done all that? He could not remember; he was surprised at the enormous quantity of work he had performed unconsciously. He seemed to have spent his whole life painting Josephina.

Afterwards, in all the hallways, in all the rooms where pictures were hung, his wife met his gaze, under the most varied aspects, frowning or smiling, beautiful or sad with sickness. They were sketched, simple, unfinished charcoal drawings of her head in the corner of a canvas, but always that glance followed him, sometimes with an expression of melancholy tenderness, sometimes with intense reproach. Where had his eyes been? He had lived amid all this without seeing it. Every day he had passed by Josephina without noticing her. His wife was resurrected; henceforth, she would sit down at table, she would enter his chamber, he would pass through the house always under the gaze of two eyes which in the past had pierced into his soul.

The dead woman was not dead; she hovered about him, revived by his hand. He could not take a step without seeing her face on every side. She greeted him from above the doors, from the ends of the rooms she seemed to call him.

In his three studios, his surprise was still greater. All his most intimate painting, which he had done as study, from impulse, without any desire for sale, was stored away there, and all was a memory of the dead woman. The pictures which dazzled the callers were hung low, down on the level of the eyes, on easels, or fastened to the wall, amid the sumptuous furniture; up above, reaching to the ceiling were arranged the studies, memories, unframed canvases, like old, forgotten works, and in this collection at the first glance Renovales saw the enigmatic face rising towards him.

He had lived without lifting his eyes, accustomed as he was to everything about him, and looking around, without seeing, without noticing those women, different in appearance but alike in expression, who watched him from above. And the countess had been there several afternoons, to see him alone in the studio! And the Persian silk draperies, hung on lances before the deep divan, had not hidden them from that sad, fixed gaze which seemed to multiply in the upper stretch of the walls.

To forget his remorse, he amused himself by counting the canvases which reproduced his wife's dainty little face. They were many--the whole life of an artist. He tried to remember when and where he had painted them. In the first days of his love, he felt that he must paint her, with an irresistible impulse to transfer to the canvas everything he delighted to see, everything he loved. Afterwards, it had been a desire to flatter her, to coax her with a false show of affection, to convince her that she was the only object of his artistic worship, copying her in a vague likeness, giving to her features, marred by illness, a soft veil of idealism. He could not live without working and, like many painters, he used as models the people around him. His daughter had carried to her new home a load of paintings, all the pictures, rough sketches, water-colors and panels which represented her from the time she used to play with the cat, dressing him in baby clothes, until she was a proud young lady, courted by Soldevilla and the man who was now her husband.

The mother had remained there, rising after death about the artist in oppressive profusion. All the little incidents in life had given Renovales an occasion to paint new pictures. He recalled his enthusiasm every time he saw her in a new dress. The colors changed her; she was a new woman, so he would declare with a vehemence which his wife took for admiration and which was merely the desire for a model.

Josephina's whole life had been fixed by her husband's hand. In one canvas she appeared dressed in white, walking through a meadow with the poetic dreaminess of an Ophelia; in another, wearing a large, plumed hat covered with jewels, she showed the self-satisfaction of a manufacturer's wife, secure in her well-being; a black curtain served as a background for her bare neck and shoulders. In another picture she had her sleeves rolled up; a white apron covered her from her breast to her feet, on her forehead was a little wrinkle of care and weariness, and in her whole mien the carelessness of one who has no time to attend to the adornment of her person. This last was the portrait of the bitter days, the image of the courageous housekeeper, without servants, working with her delicate hands in a wretched attic, striving that the artist might lack nothing, that the petty annoyances of life might not come to distract him from his supreme efforts for success.

This portrait filled the artist with the melancholy which the memory of bitter days inspires in the midst of comfort. His gratitude toward his brave companion brought with it once more remorse.

"Oh, Josephina! Josephina!"

When Cotoner arrived, he found the master lying face down on the couch with his head in his hands, as if he were asleep. He tried to interest him by talking about the function of the day before. A great success; the papers spoke of him and his speech, declaring that he was a great writer and could win as marked a success in literature as in art. Had he not read them?

Renovales answered with a bored expression. He had found them, when he went out in the morning, on a table in the reception-room. He had cast a glance at his picture surrounded by the solid columns of his speech but he had put off reading the praises until later. They did not interest him; he was thinking of something else--he was sad.

And in answer to Cotoner's anxious questions, who thought he must be ill, he said quietly:

"I am well enough. It's melancholy. I'm tired of doing nothing. I want to work and haven't the strength."

Suddenly he interrupted his old friend, pointing to all the portraits of Josephina, as if they were new works which he had just produced.

Cotoner expressed surprise. He knew them all; they had been there for years. What was strange about them?

The master told him of his recent surprise. He had lived beside them without seeing them, he had just discovered them two hours before. And Cotoner laughed.

"You are rather unsettled, Mariano. You live without noticing what is around you. That is why you don't know of Soldevilla's marriage to a rich girl. The poor boy was disappointed because his master was not present at the wedding."

Renovales shrugged his shoulders. What did he care for such follies? There was a long pause and the master, pensive and sad, suddenly raised his head with a determined expression.

"What do you think of those portraits, Pepe?" he asked anxiously. "Is it she? I couldn't have made a mistake in painting them, I couldn't have seen her different from what she really was, could I?"

Cotoner broke out laughing. Really, the master was out of his mind. What questions! Those portraits were marvels, like all of his work. But Renovales insisted with the impatience of doubt. His opinion! Were those Josephinas like his wife!

"Exactly," said the Bohemian. "Why, man alive, their fidelity to life is the most astonishing thing about your portraits!"

He declared this confidently, but a shadow of doubt worried him. Yes, it was Josephina, but there was something unusual, idealized about her. Her features looked the same, but they had an inner light that made them more beautiful. It was a defect he had always found in these pictures, but he said nothing.

"And she," insisted the master, "was she really beautiful? What did you think of her as a woman? Tell me, Pepe,--without hesitating. It's strange, I can't remember very well what she was like."

Cotoner was disconcerted by these questions, and answered with some embarrassment. What an odd thing! Josephina was very good--an angel; he always remembered her with gratitude. He had wept for her as for a mother, though she might almost have been his daughter. She had always been very considerate and thoughtful of the poor Bohemian.

"Not that," interrupted the master. "I want to know if you thought she was beautiful, if she really was beautiful."

"Why, man, yes," said Cotoner resolutely. "She was beautiful or, rather, attractive. At the end she seemed a bit changed. Her illness! But all in all, an angel."

And the master, calmed by these words, stood looking at his own works.

"Yes, she was very beautiful," he said slowly, without turning his eyes from the canvases. "Now I recognize it; now I see her better. It's strange, Pepe. It seems as if I have found Josephina to-day after a long journey. I had forgotten her; I was no longer certain what her face was like."

There was another long pause, and once more the master began to ply his friend with anxious questions.

"Did she love me? Do you think she really loved me? Was it love that made her sometimes act so--strangely?"

This time Cotoner did not hesitate as he had at the former questions.

"Love you? Wildly, Mariano. As no man has been loved in this world. All that there was between you was jealousy--too much affection. I know it better than anyone else; old friends, like me, who go in and out of the house just like old dogs, are treated with intimacy and hear things the husband does not know. Believe me, Mariano, no one will ever love you as she did. Her sulky words were only passing clouds. I am sure you no longer remember them. What did not pass was the other, the love she bore you. I am positive; you know that she told me everything, that I was the only person she could tolerate toward the end."

Renovales seemed to thank his friend for these words with a glance of joy.

They went out to walk at the end of the afternoon, going toward the center of Madrid. Renovales talked of their youth, of their days in Rome. He laughed as he reminded Cotoner of his famous stock of Popes, he recalled the funny shows in the studios, the noisy entertainments, and then, after he was married, the evenings of friendly intercourse in that pretty little dining-room on the Via Margutta; the arrival of the Bohemian and the other artists of his circle to drink a cup of tea with the young couple; the loud discussions over painting, which made the neighbors protest, while she, his Josephina, still surprised at finding herself the mistress of a household, without her mother, and surrounded by men, smiled timidly to them all, thinking that those fearful comrades, with hair like highwaymen but as innocent and peevish as children, were very funny and interesting.

"Those were the days, Pepe! Youth, which we never appreciate till it has gone!"

Walking straight ahead, without knowing where they were going, absorbed in their conversation and their memories, they suddenly found themselves at the Puerta del Sol. Night had fallen; the electric lights were coming out; the shop windows threw patches of light on the sidewalks.

Cotoner looked at the clock on the Government Building.

"Aren't you going to the Alberca woman's house to-night?"

Renovales seemed to awaken. Yes, he must go; they expected him. But he was not going. His friend looked at him with a shocked expression, as if he considered it a serious error to scorn a dinner.

The painter seemed to lack the courage to spend the evening between Concha and her husband. He thought of her with a sort of aversion; he felt as if he might brutally repel her constant caresses and tell everything to the husband in an outburst of frankness. It was a disgrace, treachery--that life _à trois_ which the society woman accepted as the happiest of states.

"It's intolerable," he said to dissipate his friend's surprise. "I can't stand her. She's a regular barnacle, and won't let me go for a minute."

He had never spoken to Cotoner of his affair with the Alberca woman, but he did not have to tell him anything, he assumed that he knew.

"But she's pretty, Mariano," said he. "A wonderful woman! You know I admire her. You might use her for your Greek picture."

The master cast at him a glance of pity for his ignorance. He felt a desire to scoff at her, to injure her, thus justifying his indifference.

"Nothing but a façade. A face and a figure."

And bending over toward his friend he whispered to him seriously as if he were revealing the secret of a terrible crime.

"She's knock-kneed. A regular swindle."

A satyr-like smile spread over Cotoner's lips and his ears wriggled. It was the joy of a chaste man; the satisfaction of knowing the secret defects of a beauty who was out of his reach.

The master did not want to leave his friend. He needed him, he looked at him with tender sympathy, seeing in him something of his dead wife. When she was sad, he had been her confidant. When her nerves were on edge, this simple man's words ended the crisis in a flood of tears. With whom could he talk about her better?

"We will dine together, Pepe; we will go to the _Italianos_--a Roman banquet, _ravioli_, _piccata_, anything you want and a bottle of Chianti or two, as many as you can drink, and at the end sparkling Asti, better than champagne. Does that suit you, old man?"

Arm in arm they walked along, their heads high, a smile on their lips, like two young painters, eager to celebrate a recent sale with a gluttonous relief from their misery.

Renovales went back into his memories and poured them out in a torrent. He reminded Cotoner of a _trattoria_ in an alley in Rome, beyond the statue of Pasquino, before you reach the Via Governo Vecchio, a chop house of ecclesiastical quiet, run by the former cook of a cardinal. The shelves of the establishment were always covered with the headgear of the profession, priestly tiles. The merriment of the artists shocked the sedate frugality of the habitues, priests of the Papal palace or visitors who were in Rome scheming advancement; loud-mouthed lawyers in dirty frock-coats from the nearby Palace of Justice, loaded with papers.

"What _maccheroni!_ Remember, Pepe? How poor Josephina liked it!"

They used to reach the _trattoria_ at night in a merry company--she on his arm and around them the friends whose admiration for the promising young painter attracted them to him. Josephina worshiped the mysteries of the kitchen, the traditional secrets of the solemn table of the princes of the Church, which had come down to the street, taking refuge in that little room. On the white table cloth trembled the amber reflection of the wine of Orvieto in decanters, a thick, yellow, golden liquid, of clerical sweetness, a drink of old-time pontiffs, which descended to the stomach like fire and more than once had mounted to heads covered with the tiara.

On moonlit nights, they used to go from there and walk to the Colosseum to look at the gigantic, monstrous ruin under the flood of blue light. Josephina, shaking with nervous excitement, went down into the dark tunnels, groping along among the fallen stones, till she was on the open slope, facing the silent circle, which seemed to enclose the corpse of a whole people. Looking around with anxiety, she thought of the terrible beasts which had trod upon that sand. Suddenly came a frightful roar and a black beast leaped forth from the deep vomitory. Josephina clung to her husband, with a shriek of terror, and all laughed. It was Simpson, an American painter, who bent over, walking on all fours, to attack his companions with fierce cries.

"Do you remember, Pepe?" Renovales kept saying, "What days! What joy! What a fine companion the little girl was before her illness saddened her!"

They dined, talking of their youth, mingling with their memories the image of the dead. Afterwards, they walked the streets till midnight, and Renovales was always going back to those days, recalling his Josephina, as if he had spent his life worshiping her. Cotoner was tired of the conversation and said "Good-by" to the master. What new hobby was this? Poor Josephina was very interesting, but they had spent the whole evening without talking of anything else, as though memory of her was the only thing in the world.

Renovales started home impatiently; he took a cab to get there sooner. He felt as anxious as if some one were waiting for him; that showy house, cold and solitary before, seemed animated with a spirit he could not define, a beloved soul which filled it, pervading all like perfume.

As he entered, preceded by the sleepy servant, his first glance was for the water-color. He smiled; he wanted to bid good-night to that head whose eyes rested on him.

For all the Josephinas who met his gaze, rising from the shadow of the walls, as he turned on the electric lights in the parlors and hallways, he had the same smile and greeting. He no longer was uneasy in the presence of those faces which he had looked at in the morning with surprise and fear. She saw him; she read his thoughts; she forgave him, surely. She had always been so good!

He hesitated a moment on his way, wishing to go to the studios and turn on the lights. There he could see her full length, in all her grace; he would talk to her, he would ask her forgiveness in the deep silence of those great rooms. But the master stopped. What was he thinking of? Was he going to lose his senses? He drew his hand across his forehead, as if he wanted to wipe these ideas out of his mind. No doubt it was the Asti that led him to such absurdities. To sleep!

When he was in the dark, lying in his daughter's little bed, he felt uneasy. He could not sleep, he was uncomfortable. He was tempted to go out of the room and take refuge in the deserted bed-chamber as if only there could he find rest and sleep. Oh, the Venetian bed, that princely piece of furniture which kept his whole history, where he had whispered words of love; where they had talked so many times in low tones of his longing for glory and wealth; where his daughter was born!

With the energy which showed in all his whims, the master put on his clothes, and quietly, as if he feared to be overheard by his servant who slept nearby, made his way to the chamber.

He turned the key with the caution of a thief, and advanced on tiptoe, under the soft, pink light which an old lantern shed from the center of the ceiling. He carefully stretched out the mattresses on the abandoned bed. There were no sheets nor pillows. The room so long deserted was cold. What a pleasant night he was going to spend! How well he would sleep there! The gold-embroidered cushions from a sofa would serve as a pillow. He wrapped himself in an overcoat and got into bed, dressed, putting out the light so as not to see reality, to dream, peopling the darkness with the sweet deceits of his fancy.

On those mattresses, Josephina had slept. He did not see her as in the last days,--sick, emaciated, worn with physical suffering. His mind repelled that painful image, bent on beautiful illusions. The Josephina whom he saw, the Josephina within him, was the other, of the first days of their love, and not as she had been in reality but as he had seen her, as he had painted her.

His memory passed over a great stretch of time, dark and stormy; it leaped from the regret of the present to the happy days of youth. He no longer recalled the years of trying confinement, when they quarreled together, unable to follow the same path. They were unimportant disturbances in life. He thought only of her smiling kindness, her generosity, and submissiveness. How tenderly they had lived together for a part of their life, in that bed which now knew only the loneliness of his body.

The artist shivered under his inadequate covering. In this abnormal situation, exterior impressions called up memories--fragments of the past that slowly came to his mind. The cold made him think of the rainy nights in Venice, when it poured for hour after hour on the narrow alleys and deserted canals in the deep, solemn silence of a city without horses, without wheels, without any sound of life, except the lapping of the solitary water on the marble stairways. They were in the same calm, under the warm eider-down, amid the same furniture which he now half saw in the shadow.

Through the slits of the lowered blind shone the glow of the lamp which lighted the nearby canal. On the ceiling a spot of light flickered with the reflection of the dead water, constantly crossed by lines of shadow. They, closely embraced, watched this play of light and water above them. They knew that outside it was cold and damp; they exulted in their physical warmth, in the selfishness of being together, with that delicious sense of comfort, buried in silence as if the world were a thing of the past, as if their chamber were a warm oasis, in the midst of cold and darkness.

Sometimes they heard a mournful cry in the silence. _Aooo!_ It was the gondolier giving warning before he turned the corner. Across the spot of light which shimmered on the ceiling slipped a black, Lilliputian gondola, a shadow toy, on the stern of which bent a manikin the size of a fly, wielding the oar. And, thinking of those who passed in the rain, lashed by the icy gusts, they experienced a new pleasure and clung closer to each other under the soft cider-down and their lips met, disturbing the calm of their rest with the noisy insolence of youth and love.

Renovales no longer felt cold. He turned restlessly on the mattresses; the metallic embroidery of the cushions stuck in his face; he stretched out his arms in the darkness, and the silence was broken by a despairing cry, the lament of a child who demands the impossible, who asks for the moon.

"Josephina! Josephina!"

III

One morning the painter sent an urgent summons to Cotoner and the latter arrived in great alarm at the terms of the message.

"It's nothing serious," said Renovales. "I want you to tell me where Josephina was buried. I want to see her."

It was a desire which had been slowly taking form in his mind during several nights; a whim of the long hours of sleeplessness through which he dragged in the darkness.

More than a week before, he had moved into the large chamber, choosing among the bed linen, with a painstaking care that surprised the servants, the most worn sheets, which called up old memories with their embroidery. He did not find in this linen that perfume of the closets which had disturbed him so deeply; but there was something in them, the illusion, the certainty that she had many a time touched them.

After soberly and severely telling Cotoner of his wish, Renovales felt that he must offer some excuse. It was disgraceful that he did not know where Josephina was; that he had not yet gone to visit her. His grief at her death had left him helpless and afterward, the long journey.

"You always know things, Pepe! You had charge of the funeral arrangements. Tell me where she is; take me to see her."

Up to that time he had not thought of her remains. He remembered the day of the funeral, his dramatic grief which kept him in a corner with his face buried in his hands. His intimate friends, the elect, who penetrated to his retreat, clad in black, and wearing gloomy faces, caught his hand and pressed it effusively. "Courage, Mariano. Be strong, master." And outside the house, a constant trampling of horses' feet; the iron fence black with the curious crowd, a double file of carriages as far as the eye could see; reporters going from group to group, taking down names.

All Madrid was there. And they had carried her away to the slow step of a pair of horses with waving plumes, amid the undertaker's men in white wigs and gold batons--and he had forgotten her, had felt no interest in seeing the corner of the cemetery where she was buried forever, under the glare of the sun, under the night rains that dripped upon her grave. He cursed himself now for this outrageous neglect.

"Tell me where she is, Pepe. Take me. I want to see her."

He implored with the eagerness of remorse; he wanted to see her once, as soon as possible, like a sinner who fears death and cries for absolution.

Cotoner acceded to this immediate trip. She was in the Almudena cemetery, which had been closed for some time. Only those who had long standing titles to a lot went there now. Cotoner had desired to bury Josephina beside her mother in the same inclosure where the stone that covered the "lamented genius of diplomacy" was growing tarnished. He wanted her to rest among her own.

On the way, Renovales felt a sort of anguish. Like a sleep-walker he saw the streets of the city passing by the carriage window, then they went down a steep hill, ill-kempt gardens, where loafers were sleeping, leaning against the trees, or women were combing their hair in the sun; a bridge; wretched suburbs with tumble-down houses; then the open country, hilly roads and at last a grove of cypress trees beyond an adobe wall and the tops of marble buildings, angels stretching out their wings with a trumpet at their lips, great crosses, torch-holders mounted on tripods, and a pure, blue sky which seemed to smile with superhuman indifference at the excitement of that ant, named Renovales.

He was going to see her; to step on the ground which covered her body; to breathe an atmosphere in which there was still perhaps some of that warmth which was the breath of the dead woman's soul. What would he say to her?

As he entered the graveyard he looked at the keeper, an ugly, dismal old fellow, as pale and yellow and greasy as a wax candle. That man lived constantly near Josephina! He was seized with generous gratitude; he had to restrain himself, thinking of his companion, or he would have given him all the money he had with him.

Their steps resounded in the silence. They felt the murmuring calm of an abandoned garden about them, where there were more pavilions and statues than trees. They went down ruined colonnades, which echoed their steps strangely; over slabs which sounded hollow under their feet,--the void, trembling at the light touch of life.

The dead who slept there were dead indeed, without the least resurrection of memory, completely deserted, sharing in the universal decay,--unnamed, separated from life forever. From the beehive close by, no one came to give new life with tears and offerings to the ephemeral personality they once had, to the name which marked them for a moment.

Wreaths hung from the crosses, black and unraveled, with a swarm of insects in their fragments. The exuberant vegetation, where no one ever passed, stretched in every direction, loosening the tombstones with its roots, springing the steps of the resounding stairways. The rain, slowly filtering through the ground, had produced hollows. Some of the slabs were cracked open, revealing deep holes.

They had to walk carefully, fearing that the hollow ground would suddenly open; they had to avoid the depressions where a stone with letters of pale gold and noble coats-of-arms lay half on its side.

The painter walked trembling with the sadness of an immense disappointment, questioning the value of his greatest interests. And this was life! Human beauty ended like this! This was all that the human mind came to and here it must stop in all its pride!

"Here it is!" said Cotoner.

They had entered between two rows of tombs so close together that as they passed they brushed against the old ornaments which crumbled and fell at the touch.

It was a simple tomb, a sort of coffin of white marble which rose a few inches above the ground, with an elevation at one end, like the bolster of a bed and surmounted by a cross.

Renovales was cold. There was Josephina! He read the inscription several times, as if he could not convince himself. It was she; the letters reproduced her name, with a brief lament of her inconsolable husband, which seemed to him senseless, artificial, disgraceful.

He had come trembling with anxiety at the thought of the terrible moment when he should behold Josephina's last resting place. To feel that he was near her, to tread upon the ground in which she rested! He would not be able to resist this critical moment, he would weep like a child, he would fall on his knees, sobbing in deadly anguish.

Well, he was there; the tomb was before his eyes and still, they were dry; they looked about coldly in surprise.

She was there! He knew it from his friend's statement, from the declamatory inscription on the tomb, but nothing warned him of her presence. He remained indifferent, looking curiously at the adjoining graves, filled with a monstrous desire to laugh, seeing in death only his sardonic buffoon's mask.

At one side, a gentleman who rested under the endless list of his titles and honors, a sort of Count of Alberca, who had fallen asleep in the solemnity of his greatness, waiting for the angel's trumpet-blast to appear before the Lord with all his parchments and crosses. On the other, a general who rotted under a marble slab, engraved with cannon, guns and banners, as though he hoped to terrify death. In what ludicrous promiscuity Josephina had come to sleep her last sleep, mingled with, forms she had not known in life! They were her eternal, her final lovers; they carried her off from his very presence and forever, indifferent to the pressing concerns of the living. Oh, Death! What a cruel mocker! The earth! How cold and cynical!

He was sad and disgusted at human insignificance--but he did not weep. He saw only the external and material--the form, always the concern of his thoughts. Standing before the tomb he felt merely his vulgar meanness, with a sort of shame. She was his wife; the wife of a great artist.

He thought of the most famous sculptors, all friends of his; he would talk to them, they should erect an imposing sepulcher with weeping statues, symbolical of fidelity, gentleness and love, a sepulcher worthy of the companion of Renovales. And nothing more; his thought went no farther; his imagination could not pass beyond the hard marble nor penetrate the hidden mystery. The grave was speechless and empty, in the air there was nothing which spoke to the soul of the painter.

He remained indifferent, unmoved by any emotion, without ceasing for a single moment to see reality. The cemetery was a hideous, gloomy, repulsive place, with an odor of decay. Renovales thought he could perceive a stench of putrefaction scattered in the wind which bent the pointed tops of the cypresses, and swayed the old wreaths and the branches of the rose bushes.

He looked at Cotoner with a sort of displeasure. He was to blame for his coldness. His presence was a check on him which prevented him from showing his feelings. Though a friend, he was a stranger, an obstacle between him and the dead. He interfered with that silent dialogue of love and forgiveness of which the master had dreamed as he came. He would come back alone. Perhaps the cemetery would be different in solitude.

And he came back; he came back the next day. The keeper greeted him with a smile, realizing that he was a profitable visitor.

The cemetery seemed larger, more imposing in the silence of the bright, quiet morning. He had no one to talk with; he heard no human sound but that of his own steps. He went up stairways, crossed galleries, leaving behind him his indifference, thinking anxiously that every step took him farther from the living, that the gate with its greedy keeper was already far away and that he was the only living being, the only one who thought and could feel fear in the mournful city of thousands and thousands of beings, wrapped in a mystery which made them imposing amid the strange, dull sounds of the land beyond that terrifies with the blackness of its bottomless abyss.

When he reached Josephina's grave, he took off his hat.

No one. The trees and the rose bushes trembled in the wind among the cross paths. Some birds were twittering above him in an acacia, and the sound of life, disturbing the rustling of the solitary vegetation, shed a certain calm over the painter's spirit, blotted out the childish fear he had felt before he reached there, as he crossed the echoing pavements of the colonnades.

For a long time he remained motionless, absorbed in the contemplation of that marble case obliquely cut by a ray of sunlight, one part golden, the other blue in the shadow. Suddenly he shivered, as if he had awakened at the sound of a voice,--his own. He was talking, aloud, driven to cry out his thoughts, to stir this deathly silence with something that meant life.

"Josephina. It is I. Do you forgive me?"

It was a childish longing to hear the voice from beyond that might pour on his soul a balm of forgiveness and forgetting; a desire of humbling himself, of weeping, of having her listen to him, smile to him from the depth of the void, at the great revolution which had been carried out in his spirit. He wanted to tell her--and he did tell her silently with the speech of his feelings--that he loved her, that he had resuscitated her in his thoughts, now that he had lost her forever, with a love which he had never had for her in her earthly life. He felt ashamed before her grave; ashamed of the difference of their fates.

He begged her forgiveness for living, for still feeling vigorous and young, for now loving her without reality, in a wild hope, when he had been cold and indifferent at her departure, with his thoughts on another woman, hoping for her death with criminal craving. Wretch! And he was still alive! And she, so kind, so sweet, buried forever, lost in the depths of eternal, ruthless death!

He wept; at last he wept those hot, sincere tears which compel forgiveness. It was the weeping which he had so long desired. Now he felt that they approached each other, that they were almost together, separated only by a strip of marble and a little earth. His fancy saw her poor remains and in their decay he loved them, he worshiped them with a calm passion that rose above earthly miseries. Nothing which had once been Josephina's could cause him repugnance or horror. If he could but open that white case! If he could kiss her, take her ashes with him, that they might go with him on his pilgrimage, like the household gods of the ancients! He no longer saw the cemetery, he did not hear the birds nor the rustling of the branches; he seemed to live in a cloud, looking only at that white grave, the marble slab,--the last resting place of his beloved.

She forgave him; her body rose before him, such as it had been in her youth, as he had painted it. Her deep eyes were fixed on his, eyes that shone with love. He seemed to hear her childish voice laughing, admiring little trifles, as in the happy days. It was a resurrection,--the image of the dead woman was before him, formed no doubt by the invisible atoms of her being which floated over her grave, by something of the essence of her life which still fluttered around the material remains, reluctant to say farewell before they started on the way that leads to the depths of the infinite.

His tears continued to fall in the silence, in sweet relief; his voice, broken by sobs, stilled the birds with fear. "Josephina! Josephina!" And the echo answered with dull, mocking cries, from the smooth walls of the mausoleums, from the invisible end of the colonnades.

The artist could not resist the temptation to step over the rusted chains which surrounded the grave. To feel her nearer! To overcome the short distance which separated them! To mock death with a loving kiss of intense gratitude for forgiveness!

The huge frame of the master covered the slab of marble, his arms encircled it as if he would pick it up from the ground and carry it away with him. His lips eagerly sought the highest part of the stone.

He wished to find the spot which covered her face and he began to kiss it, moving his head as if he were going to dash it against the marble.

A sensation of stone, warmed by the sun, on his lips; a taste of dust, insipid and repulsive in his mouth. Renovales sat up, rose to his feet as if he had awakened, as if the cemetery, until then invisible, was suddenly restored to reality. The faint odor of decay once more struck him.

Now he saw the grave, as he had seen it the day before. He no longer wept. The immense disappointment dried his tears, though within him he felt the longing for weeping increased. Horrible awakening! Josephina was not there; only the void was about him. It was useless to seek the past in the field of death. Memories could not be aroused in that cold ground, stirred by worms and decay. Oh, where had he come to seek his dreams! From what a foul dunghill he had tried to raise the roses of his memories!

In fancy he saw her beneath that repugnant marble in all the repulsiveness of death, and this vision left him cold, indifferent. What had he to do with such wretchedness? No; Josephina was not there. She was truly dead, and if he ever was to see her it would not be beside her grave.

Once more he wept--not with external tears but within; he mourned the bitterness of solitude, the inability to exchange a single thought with her. He had so many things to tell her which were burning his soul! How he would talk with her, if some mysterious power would bring her back for an instant. He would implore her forgiveness; he would throw himself at her feet, lamenting the error of his life, the painful deceit of having remained beside her, indifferent, fostering hopes which had no fulfillment, only to groan now in the torment of irreparable loss, with a mad, thirsting love which worshiped the woman in death after scoring her in life.

He would swear a thousand times the truth of this posthumous worship, this desire aroused by death. And then he would lay her once more in her eternal bed, and would depart in peace after his wild confession.

But it was impossible. The silence between them would last forever. He must remain for all eternity with this confession of his thoughts, unable to tell it to her, crushed beneath its weight. She had gone away with rancor and scorn in her soul, forgetting their first love, and she would never know that it had blossomed once more after her death.

She could not cast one glance back; she did not exist; she would never again exist. All that he was doing and thinking, the sleepless nights when he called to her in loving appeal, the long hours when he stood gazing at her pictures,--all would be unknown to her. And when he died in his turn, the silence and loneliness would be still greater. The things which he had been unable to tell her would die with him and they would both crumble away in the earth, strangers to each other, prolonging their grievous error in eternity, unable to approach each other, or see each other, without a saving word, condemned to the fearful, unbounded void, over whose limitless firmament passed unnoticed the desires and griefs of men.

The unhappy artist walked up and down enraged at his impotence. What cruelty surrounded them? What dark, hard-hearted, implacable mockery was that which drove them toward one another and then separated them forever, forever! forbidding them to exchange a look of forgiveness, a word to rectify their errors and to permit them to return to their eternal sleep with new peace?

Lies--deceit that hovers about man, like a protecting atmosphere that shields him in his path through the void of life. That grave with its inscription was a lie; she was not there; it contained merely a few remnants, like those of all the others, which no one could recognize, not even he, who had loved her so dearly.

His despair made him lift his eyes to the pure, shining sky. Ah, the heavens! A lie, too! That heavenly blue with its golden rays and fanciful clouds was an imperceptible film, an illusion of the eyes. Beyond the deceitful web which wraps the earth was the true heaven, endless space, and it was black, ominously obscure, with the sputtering spark of burning tears, of infinite worlds, little lamps of eternity in whose flame lived other swarms of invisible atoms, and the icy, blind, and cruel soul of shadowy space laughed at their passions and longings, at the lies they fabricated incessantly to protect their ephemeral existence, striving to prolong it with the illusion of an immortal soul.

All were lies which death came to unmask, interrupting men's course on the pleasant path of their illusions, throwing them out of it with as much indifference as their feet had crushed and driven to flight the lines of ants which advanced amid the grass that was sowed with bony remains.

Renovales was forced to flee. What was he doing there? What did that deserted, empty spot of earth mean to him? Before he went away, with the firm determination not to return again, he looked around the grave for a flower, a few blades of grass, something to take with him as a remembrance. No, Josephina was not there; he was sure, but like a lover, he felt that longing, that passionate respect for anything which the woman he loves had touched.

He scorned a cluster of wild-flowers which grew in abundance at the foot of the grave. He wanted them from near the head and he picked a few white buds close to the cross, thinking that perhaps their roots had touched her face, that they preserved in their petals something of her eyes, of her lips.

He went home downcast and sad, with a void in his mind and death in his soul.

But in the warm air of the house, his love came forth to meet him; he saw her beside him, smiling from the walls, rising out of the great canvases. Renovales felt a warm breath on his face, as if those pictures were breathing at once, filling the house with the essence of memories which seemed to float in the atmosphere. Everything spoke to him of her, everything was filled with that vague perfume of the past. Over there on the graveyard hill was the wretched perishable covering. He would not return. What was the use? He felt her around him, all that was left of her in the world was enclosed in the house, as the strong odor remains in a broken, forgotten perfume bottle. No, not in the house. She was in him, he felt her presence within him, like those wandering souls of the legends who took refuge in another's body, struggling to share the dwelling with the soul which was mistress of the body. They had not lived in vain so many years together--at first united by love and afterward by habit. For half a lifetime, their bodies had slept in close contact, exchanging through their open pores that warmth which is like the breath of the soul. She had taken away a part of the artist's life. In her remains, crumbling in the lonely cemetery, there was a part of the master and he, in turn, felt something strange and mysterious which chained him to her memory, which made him always long for that body--the complement of his own--which had already vanished in the void.

Renovales shut himself up in the house, with a taciturn air and a gloomy expression which terrified his valet. If Señor Cotoner came, he was to tell him that the master had gone out. If letters came from the countess, he could leave them in an old terra-cotta jar in the anteroom, where the neglected calling cards were piling up. If it was she who came, he was to close the door. He did not want anything to distract him. Dinner should be served in the studio.

And he worked alone, without a model, with a tenacity which kept him standing before the canvas until it was dark. Sometimes, when the servant entered at nightfall, he found the luncheon untouched on the table. In the evening the master ate in silence in the dining-room, from sheer animal necessity, not seeing what he was eating, his eyes gazing into space.

Cotoner, somewhat piqued at this unusual régime which prevented him from entering the studio, would call in the evening and try in vain to interest him with news of the world outside. He observed in the master's eyes a strange light, a gleam of insanity.

"How goes the work?"

Renovales answered vaguely. He could see it soon--in a few days.

His expression of indifference was repeated when he heard the Countess of Alberca mentioned. Cotoner described her alarm and astonishment at the master's behavior. She had sent for him to find out about Mariano, to complain, with tears in her eyes, of his absence. She had twice been to the door of his house and had not been able to get in; she complained of the servant and that mysterious work. At least he ought to write to her, answer her letters, full of tender laments, which she did not suspect were lying unopened and neglected in a pile of yellow cards. The artist listened to this with a shrug of the shoulders as if he was hearing about the sorrows of a distant planet.

"Let's go and see Milita," he said. "There isn't any opera to-night."

In his retirement the only thing which connected him with the outside world was his desire to see his daughter, to talk to her, as if he loved her with new affection. She was his Josephina's flesh, she had lived in her. She was healthy and strong, like him, nothing in her appearance reminded him of the other, but her sex bound her closely with the beloved image of her mother.

He listened to Milita with smiles of pleasure, grateful for the interest she manifested in his health.

"Are you ill, papa? You look poorly. I don't like your appearance. You are working too much."

But he calmed her, swinging his strong arms, swelling out his lusty chest. He had never felt better. And with the minuteness of a good-natured grandfather he inquired about all the little displeasures of her life. Her husband spent the day with his friends. She grew tired of staying at home and her only amusement was making calls or going shopping. And after that came a complaint, always the same, which the father divined at her first words. López de Sosa was selfish, niggardly toward her. His spendthrift habits never went beyond his own pleasures and his own person; he economized in his wife's expenses. He loved her in spite of that. Milita did not venture to deny it; no mistresses or unfaithfulness. She would be likely to stand that! But he had no money except for his horses and automobiles; she even suspected that he was gambling, and his poor wife lived without a thing to her back, and had to weep her requests every time she received a bill, little trifles of a thousand pesetas or two.

The father was as generous to her as a lover. He felt like pouring at her feet all that he had piled up in long years of labor. She must live in happiness, since she loved her husband! Her worries made him smile scornfully. Money! Josephina's daughter sad because she needed things, when in his house there were so many dirty, insignificant papers which he had worked so hard to win and which he now looked at with indifference! He always went away from these visits amid hugs and a shower of kisses from that big girl who expressed her joy by shaking him disrespectfully, as if he were a child.

"Papa, dear, how good you are! How I love you!"

One night as he left his daughter's house with Cotoner, he said mysteriously:

"Come in the morning, I will show it to you. It isn't finished but I want you to see it. Just you. No one can judge better."

Then he added with the satisfaction of an artist:

"Once I could paint only what I saw. Now I am different. It has cost me a good deal, but you shall judge."

And in his voice there was the joy of difficulties overcome, the certainty that he had produced a great work.

Cotoner came the next day, with the haste of curiosity, and entered the studio closed to others.

"Look!" said the master with a proud gesture.

His friend looked. Opposite the window was a canvas on an easel; a canvas for the most part gray, and on this, confused, interlaced lines revealing some hesitancy over the various contours of a body. At one end was a spot of color, to which the master pointed--a woman's head which stood out sharply on the rough background of the cloth.

Cotoner stood in silent contemplation. Had the great artist really painted that? He did not see the master's hand. Although he was an unimportant painter, he had a good eye, and he saw in the canvas hesitancy, fear, awkwardness, the struggle with something unreal which was beyond his reach, which refused to enter the mold of form. He was struck by the lack of likeness, by the forced exaggeration of the strokes; the eyes unnaturally large, the tiny mouth, almost a point, the bright skin with its supernatural pallor. Only in the pupils of the eyes was there something remarkable--a glance that came from afar, an extraordinary light which seemed to pass through the canvas.

"It has cost me a great deal. No work ever made me suffer so. This is only the head; the easiest part. The body will come later; a divine nude, such as has never been seen. And only you shall see it, only you!"

The Bohemian no longer looked at the picture. He was gazing at the master, astonished at the work, disconcerted by its mystery.

"You see, without a model. Without the real before me," continued the master. "_They_ were all the guide I had; but it is my best, my supreme work."

_They_ were all the portraits of the dead woman, taken down from the walls and placed on easels or chairs in a close circle around the canvas.

His friend could not contain his astonishment, he could not pretend any longer, overcome by surprise.

"Oh, but it is---- But you have been trying to paint Josephina!"

Renovales started back violently.

"Josephina, yes. Who else should it be? Where are your eyes?"

And his angry glance flashed at Cotoner.

The latter looked at the head again. Yes, it was she, with a beauty that was not of this world,--uncanny, spiritualized, as if it belonged to a new humanity, free from coarse necessities, in which the last traces of animal descent have died out. He gazed at the numerous portraits of other times and recognized parts of them in the new work, but animated by a light which came from within and changed the value of the colors, giving to the face a strange unfamiliarity.

"You recognize her at last!" said the master, anxiously following the impressions of his work in the eyes of his friend. "Is it she? Tell me, don't you think it is like her?"

Cotoner lied compassionately. Yes, it was she, at last he saw her well enough. She, but more beautiful than in life. Josephina had never looked like that.

Now it was Renovales who looked with surprise and pity. Poor Cotoner! Unhappy failure--pariah of art, who could not rise above the nameless crowd and whose only feeling was in his stomach! What did he know about such things? What was the use of asking his opinion?

He had not recognized Josephina, and nevertheless this canvas was his best portrait, the most exact.

Renovales bore her within him, he saw her merely by retiring into his thoughts. No one could know her better than he. The rest had forgotten her. That was the way he saw her and that was what she had been.

IV

The Countess of Alberca succeeded in making her way, one afternoon, to the master's studio.

The servant saw her arrive as usual in a cab, cross the garden, come up the steps, and enter the reception room with the hasty step of a resolute woman who goes straight ahead without hesitating. He tried to block her way respectfully, going from side to side, meeting her every time she started to one side to pass this obstacle. The master was working! The master was not receiving callers! It was a strict order; he could not make an exception! But she continued ahead with a frown, a flash of cold wrath in her eyes, an evident determination to strike down the servant, if it was necessary, and to pass over his body.

"Come, my good man, get out of the way."

And her haughty, irritated accent made the poor servant tremble and at a loss to stop this invasion of rustling skirts and strong perfumes. In one of her evolutions the fair lady ran into an Italian mosaic table, on the center of which was the old jar. Her glance fell instinctively to the bottom of the jar.

It was only an instant, but enough for her woman's curiosity to recognize the blue envelopes with white borders, whose sealed ends stuck out, untouched, from the pile of cards. The last straw! Her paleness grew intense, almost greenish, and she started forward with such a rush that the servant could not stop her and was left behind her, dejected, confused, fearful of his master's wrath.

Renovales, alarmed by the sharp click of heels on the hard floor, and the rustling of skirts, turned toward the door just as the countess made her entrance with a dramatic expression.

"It's me."

"You? You, dear?"

Excitement, surprise, fear made the master stammer.

"Sit down," he said coldly.

She sat down on a couch and the artist remained standing in front of her.

They looked at each other as if they did not recognize each other after this absence of weeks which weighed on their memories as if it were of years.

Renovales looked at her coldly, without the least tremble of desire, as if it were an ordinary visitor whom he must get rid of as soon as possible. He was surprised at her greenish pallor, at her mouth, drawn with irritation, at her hard eyes which flashed yellow flames, at her nose which curved down to her upper lip. She was angry, but when her eyes fell on him, they lost their hardness.

Her woman's instinct was calmed when she gazed at him. He, too, looked different in the carelessness of the seclusion; his hair tangled, revealing the preoccupation, the fixed, absorbing idea, which made him neglect the neatness of his person.

Her jealousy vanished instantly, her cruel suspicion that she would surprise him in love with another woman, with the fickleness of an artist. She knew the external evidence of love, the necessity a man feels of making himself attractive, refining the care of his dress.

She surveyed his neglect with satisfaction, noticing his dirty clothes, his long fingernails, stained with paint, all the details which revealed lack of tidiness, forgetfulness of his person. No doubt it was a passing artist's whim, a craze for work, but they did not reveal what she had suspected.

In spite of this calming certainty, as Concha was ready to shed the tears which were all prepared, waiting impatiently on the edge of her eyelids, she raised her hands to her eyes, curling up on one end of the couch, with a tragic expression. She was very unhappy; she was suffering terribly. She had passed several horrible weeks. What was the matter? Why had he disappeared without a word of explanation, when she loved him more than ever, when she was ready to give up everything, to cause a perfect scandal, by coming to live with him, as his companion, his slave? And her letters, her poor letters, neglected, unopened, as if they were annoying requests for alms. She had spent the nights awake, putting her whole soul into their pages! And in her accent there was a tremble of literary pique, of bitterness, that all the pretty things, which she wrote down with a smile of satisfaction after long reflection, remained unknown. Men! Their selfishness and cruelty! How stupid women were to worship them!

She continued to weep and Renovales looked at her as if she were another woman. She seemed ridiculous to him in that grief, which distorted her face, which made her ugly, destroying her smiling, doll-like impassibility.

He tried to offer excuses, that he might not seem cruel by keeping silent, but they lacked warmth and the desire to carry conviction. He was working hard; it was time for him to return to his former life of creative activity. She forgot that he was an artist, a master of some reputation, who had his duty to the public. He was not like those young fops who could devote the whole day to her and pass their life at her feet, like enamored pages.

"We must be serious, Concha," he added with pedantic coldness. "Life is not play. I must work and I am working. I haven't been out of here for I don't know how many days."

She stood up angrily, took her hands from her eyes, looked at him, rebuking him. He lied; he had been out and it had never occurred to him to come to her house for a moment.

"Just to say 'Good morning,' nothing more. So that I may see you for an instant, Mariano, long enough to be sure that you are the same, that you still love me. But you have gone out often; you have been seen. I have my detectives who tell me everything. You are too well known to pass unnoticed. You have been in the Museo del Prado mornings. You have been seen gazing at a picture of Goya's, a nude, for hours at a time, like an idiot. Your hobby is coming back again, Mariano! And it hasn't occurred to you to come and see me; you haven't answered my letters. You feel proud, it seems, content with being loved, and submit to being worshiped like an idol, certain that the more uncivil you are, the more you will be loved. Oh, these men! These artists!"

She sobbed, but her voice no longer preserved the irritated tone of the first few moments. The certainty that she did not have to struggle with the influence of another woman softened her pride, leaving in her only the gentle complaint of a victim who is eager to sacrifice herself anew.

"But sit down," she exclaimed amid her sobs, pointing to a place on the couch beside her. "Don't stand up. You look as if you wanted me to go away."

The painter sat down timidly, taking care not to touch her, avoiding those hands which reached out to him, longing for a pretext to seize him. He saw her desire to weep on his shoulder, to forget everything, and to banish her last tears with a smile. That was what always happened, but Renovales, knowing the game, drew back roughly. That must not begin again; it could, not be repeated, even if he wanted to. He must tell her the truth at any cost, end it forever, throw off the burden from his shoulders.

He spoke hoarsely, stammering, with his eyes on the floor, not daring to lift them for fear of meeting Concha's which he felt were fixed upon him.

For several days he had been meaning to write to her. He had been afraid that he might not express his ideas clearly and so he had put off the letter until the next day. Now he was glad she had come; he rejoiced at the weakness of his valet, in letting her enter.

They must talk like good comrades who examine the future together. It was time to put an end to their folly. They would be what Concha once desired, friends--good friends. She was beautiful; she still had the freshness of youth, but time leaves its mark, and he felt that he was getting old; he looked at life from a height, as we look at the water of a stream, without dipping into it.

Concha listened to him in astonishment, refusing to understand his words. What did these scruples mean? After some digressions, the painter spoke remorsefully of his friend, the Count of Alberca, a man whom he respected for his very guilelessness. His conscience rose in protest at the simple admiration of the good man. This daring deceit in his own house, under his own roof, was infamous. He could not go on; they must purify themselves from the past by being good friends, must say good-by as lovers, without spite or antipathy, grateful to each other for the happy past, taking with them, like dead lovers, their pleasant memories.

Concha's laugh, nervous, sarcastic, insolent, interrupted the artist. Her cruel spirit of fun was aroused at the thought that her husband was the pretext of this break. Her husband! And once more she began to laugh uproariously, revealing the count's insignificance, the absolute lack of respect which he inspired in his wife, or her habit of adjusting her life as her fancy dictated, with never a thought of what that man might say or think. Her husband did not exist for her; she never feared him; she had never thought that he might serve as an obstacle, and yet her lover spoke of him, presented _him_ as a justification for leaving her!

"My husband!" she repeated amid the peals of her cruel laughter. "Poor thing! Leave him in peace; he has nothing to do with us. Don't lie; don't be a coward. Speak. You've something else on your mind. I don't know what it is; but I have a presentiment, I see it from here. If you loved another woman! If you loved another woman!"

But she broke off this threatening exclamation. She needed only to look at him to be convinced that it was impossible. His body was not perfumed with love; everything about him revealed calm peace, without interests or desires. Perhaps it was a whim of his fancy, some unbalanced caprice which led him to repel her. And encouraged by this belief, she relaxed, forgetting her anger, speaking to him affectionately, caressing him with a fervor in which there was something at once of the mother and of the mistress.

Renovales suddenly saw her beside him with her arms around his neck, burying her hands in his tangled hair.

She was not proud; men worshiped her, but her heart, her body, all of her belonged to the master, the ungrateful brute, who returned so ill her affection that she was getting old with her trouble.

Suddenly filled with tenderness, she kissed his forehead generously and purely. Poor boy! He was working so hard! The only thing the matter was that he was tired out, distracted with too much painting. He must leave his brushes alone, live, love her, be happy, rest his wrinkled forehead behind which, like a curtain, an invisible world passed and repassed in perpetual revolution.

"Let me kiss your pretty forehead again, so that the hobgoblins within may be silent and sleep."

And she kissed once more his _pretty_ forehead, delighting in caressing with her lips the furrows and prominences of its irregular surface, rough as volcanic ground.

For a long time her wheedling voice, with an exaggerated childish lisp, sounded in the silence of the studio. She was jealous of painting, the cruel mistress, exacting and repugnant, who seemed to drive her poor baby mad. One of these days, master, the studio would catch on fire together with all its pictures. She tried to draw him to her, to make him sit on her lap, so that she might rock him like a child.

"Look here, Mariano, dear. Laugh for your Concha. Laugh, you big stupid! Laugh, or I'll whip you."

He laughed, but it was forced. He tried to resist her fondling, tired of those childish tricks which once were his delight. He remained indifferent to those hands, those lips, to the warmth of that body which rubbed against him without awakening the least desire. And he had loved that woman! For her he had committed the terrible, irreparable crime which would make him drag the chain of remorse forever! What surprises life has in store!

The painter's coldness finally had its effect on the Alberca woman. She seemed to awaken from the dream, in which she was lulling herself. She drew back from her lover, and looked at him fixedly with imperious eyes, in which a spark of pride was once more beginning to flash.

"Say that you love me! Say it at once! I need it!"

But in vain did she show her authority; in vain she brought her eyes close to him, as if she wished to look within him. The artist smiled faintly, murmured evasive words, refused to comply with her demands.

"Say it out loud, so that I can hear it. Say that you love me. Call me Phryne, as you used to when you worshiped me on your knees, kissing my body!"

He said nothing. He hung his head in shame at the memory, so as not to see her.

The countess stood up nervously. In her anger, she drew back to the middle of the studio, her hands clenched, her lips quivering, her eyes flashing. She wanted to destroy something, to fall on the floor in a convulsion. She hesitated whether to break an Arabic amphora close by, or to fall on that bowed head and scratch it with her nails. Wretch! She had loved him so dearly; she still cared for him so, feeling bound to him by both vanity and habit!

"Say whether you love me," she cried. "Say it once and for all! Yes or no?"

Still she obtained no answer. The silence was trying. Once more she believed there was another love, a woman who had come to occupy her place. But who was it? Where could he have found her? Her woman's instinct made her turn her head and glance into the next studio and beyond into the last, the real workshop of the master. Warned by a mysterious intuition, she started to run toward it. There! Perhaps there! The painter's steps sounded behind her. He had started from his dejection when he saw her fleeing; he followed her in a frenzy of fear. Concha foresaw that she was going to know the truth; a cruel truth with all the crudeness of a discovery in broad daylight. She stopped, scowling with a mental effort before that portrait which seemed to dominate the studio, occupying the best easel, in the most advantageous position, in spite of the solitary gray of its canvas.

The master saw in Concha's face the same expression of doubt and surprise which he had seen in Cotoner's. Who was that? But the hesitation was shorter; her woman's pride sharpened her senses. She saw beyond that unrecognizable head the circle of older portraits which seemed to guard it.

Ah! The immense surprise in her eyes; the cold astonishment in the glance she fixed on the painter as she surveyed him from head to foot!

"Is it Josephina?"

He bowed his head in mute assent. But his silence seemed to him cowardly; he felt that he must cry out in the presence of those canvases, what he had not dared to say outside. It was a longing to flatter the dead woman, to implore her forgiveness, by confessing his hopeless love.

"Yes, it is Josephina."

And he said it with spirit, going forward a step, looking at Concha as if she were an enemy, with a sort of hostility in his eyes which did not escape her notice.

They did not say anything more. The countess could not speak. Her surprise passed the limits of the probable, the known.

In love with his wife,--and after she was dead! Shut up like a hermit in order to paint her with a beauty which she had never had. Life brings surprises, but this surely had never been seen before.

She felt as if she were falling, falling, driven by astonishment and, at the end of the fall, she found that she was changed, without a complaint or pang of grief. Everything about her seemed strange--the room, the man, the pictures. This whole affair went beyond her power of conception. Had she found a woman there, it would have made her weep and shriek with grief, roll on the floor, love the master still more with the stimulus of jealousy. But to find that her rival was a dead woman! And more than that--his wife! It seemed supremely ridiculous, she felt a mad desire to laugh. But she did not laugh. She recalled the unusual expression she had noticed on the master's face, when she entered the studio; she thought that now she saw in his eyes a spark of that same gleam.

Suddenly she felt afraid; afraid of the man who looked at her in silence as if he did not know her and toward whom she felt the same strangeness.

Still she had for him a glance of sympathy, of that tenderness which every woman feels in the presence of unhappiness, even if it afflicts a stranger. Poor Mariano! All was over between them; she took care not to speak intimately to him; she held out her gloved hand with the gesture of an unapproachable lady. For a long time they stood in this position, speaking only with their eyes.

"Good-by, master; take care of yourself! Don't bother to come with me. I know the way. Go on with your work. Paint----"

Her heels clicked nervously on the waxed floor as she left the room, which she was never to enter again. The swish of her skirts scattered their wake of perfumes in the studio for the last time.

Renovales breathed more freely when he was left alone. He had ended forever the error of his life. The only thing in this visit that left a sting was the countess's hesitation before the portrait. She had recognized it sooner than Cotoner, but she too had hesitated. No one remembered Josephina; he alone kept her image.

That same afternoon, before his old friend came, the master received another call. His daughter appeared in the studio. Renovates had divined that it was she before she entered, by the whirl of joy and overflowing life which seemed to precede her.

She had come to see him; she had promised him a visit months ago. And her father smiled indulgently, recalling some of her complaints when he last visited her. Just to see him?

Milita pretended to be absorbed in examining the studio which she had not entered for a long time.

"Look!" she exclaimed. "Why, it's mamma!"

She looked at the picture with astonishment, but the master seemed pleased at the readiness with which she had recognized her. At last, his daughter! The instinct of blood! The poor master did not see the hasty glance at the other portraits which had guided the girl in her induction.

"Do you like it? Is it she?" he asked as anxiously as a novice.

Milita answered rather vaguely. Yes, it was good; perhaps a little more beautiful than she was. She never knew her like that.

"That is true," said the master, "You never saw her in her good days. But she was like that before you were born. Your poor mother was very beautiful."

But his daughter did not manifest any great enthusiasm over the picture. It seemed strange to her. Why was the head at one end of the canvas? What was he going to add? What did those lines mean? The master tried to explain, almost blushing, afraid to tell his intention to his daughter, suddenly overcome by paternal modesty. He was not sure as yet what he would do; he had to decide on a dress to suit her. And in a sudden access of tenderness, his eyes grew moist and he kissed his daughter.

"Do you remember her well, Milita? She was very good, wasn't she?"

His daughter felt infected by her father's sadness, but only for a moment. Her strength, health and joy of life soon threw off these sad impressions. Yes, very good. She often thought about her. Perhaps she spoke the truth; but these memories were not deep nor painful. Death seemed to her a thing without meaning, a remote incident without much terror which did not disturb the serene calm of her physical perfection.

"Poor mamma," she added in a forced tone. "It was a relief for her to go. Always sick, always sad! With such a life it is better to die!"

In her words there was a trace of bitterness, the memory of her youth, spent with that touchy invalid, in an atmosphere made the more unpleasant by the hostile chill with which her parents treated each other. Besides, her expression was icy. We all must die. The weak must go first and leave their place to the strong. It was the unconscious, cruel selfishness of health. Renovales suddenly saw his daughter's soul through this rent of frankness. The dead woman had known them both. The daughter was his, wholly his. He, too, possessed that selfishness in his strength which had made him crush weakness and delicacy placed under his protection. Poor Josephina had only him left, repentant and adoring. For the other people, she had not passed through the world; not even his daughter felt any lasting sorrow at her death.

Milita turned her back to the portrait. She forgot her mother and her father's work. An artist's hobby! She had come for something else.

She sat down beside him, almost in the same way that another woman had sat down, a few hours before. She coaxed him with her rich voice, which took on a sort of cat-like purring. Papa,--papa, dear,--she was very unhappy. She came to see him, to tell him her troubles.

"Yes, money," said the master, somewhat annoyed at the indifference with which she had spoken of her mother.

"Money, papa, you've said it; I told you the other day. But that isn't all. Rafael--my husband--I can't stand this sort of life."

And she related all the petty trials of her existence. In order not to feel that she was prematurely a widow, she had to go with her husband in his automobile and show an interest in his trips which once had amused her but now were growing unbearable.

"It's the life of a section-hand, papa, always swallowing dust and counting kilometers. When I love Madrid so much! When I can't live out of it!"

She had sat down on her father's knees, she talked to him, looking into his eyes, smoothing his hair, pulling his mustache, like a mischievous child,--almost as the other had.

"Besides, he's stingy; if he had his way, I'd look like a frump. He thinks everything is too much. Papa, help me out of this difficulty, it's only two thousand pesetas. With that I can get on my feet and then I won't bother you with any more loans. Come, that's a dear papa. I need them right away, because I waited till the last minute, so as not to inconvenience you."

Renovales moved about uneasily under the weight of his daughter, a strapping girl who fell on him like a child. Her filial confidences annoyed him. Her perfume made him think of that other perfume, which disturbed his nights, spreading through the solitude of the rooms. She seemed to have inherited her mother's flesh.

He pushed her away roughly, and she took this movement for a refusal. Her face grew sad, tears came to her eyes, and her father repented his brusqueness. He was surprised at her constant requests for money. What did she want it for? He recalled the wedding-presents, that princely abundance of clothes and jewels which had been on exhibition in this very room. What did she need? But Milita looked at her father in astonishment. More than a year had gone by since then. It was clear enough that her father was ignorant in such matters. Was she going to wear the same gowns, the same hats, the same ornaments for an endless length of time, more than twelve months? Horrible! That was too commonplace. And overcome at the thought of such a monstrosity, she began to shed her tender tears to the great disturbance of the master.

"There, there, Milita, there's no use in crying. What do you want? Money? I'll send you all you need to-morrow. I haven't much at the house. I shall have to get it at the bank--operations you don't understand."

But Milita, encouraged by her victory, insisted on her request with desperate obstinacy. He was deceiving her; he would not remember it the next day; she knew her father. Besides, she needed the money at once,--her honor was at stake (she declared it seriously) if her friends discovered that she was in debt.

"This very minute, papa. Don't be horrid. Don't amuse yourself by making me worry. You must have money, lots of it, perhaps you have it on you. Let's see, you naughty papa, let me search your pockets, let me look at your wallet. Don't say no; you have it with you. You have it with you!"

She plunged her hands in her father's breast, unbuttoning his working jacket, tickling him to get at the inside pocket. Renovales resisted feebly. "You foolish girl. You're wasting your time. Where do you think the wallet is? I never carry it in this suit."

"It's here, you fibber," his daughter cried merrily, persisting in her search. "I feel it! I have it! Look at it!"

She was right. The painter had forgotten that he had picked it up that morning to pay a bill and then had put it absent-mindedly in the pocket of his serge coat.

Milita opened it with a greediness that hurt her father. Oh, those woman's hands, trembling in the search for money! He grew calmer when he thought of the fortune he had amassed, of the different colored papers which he kept in his desk. All would be his daughter's and perhaps this would save her from the danger toward which her longing to live amid the vanities and tinsel of feminine slavery was leading her.

In an instant she had her hands on a number of bills of different denominations, forming a roll which she squeezed tight between her fingers.

Renovales protested.

"Let me have it, Milita, don't be childish. You're leaving me without a cent. I'll send it to you to-morrow; give it up now. It's robbery."

She avoided him; she had stood up; she kept at a distance, raising her hand above her hat to save her booty. She laughed boisterously at her trick. She did not mean to give him back a single one! She did not know how many there were, she would count them at home, she would be out of difficulty for the nonce, and the next day she would ask him for what was lacking.

The master finally began to laugh, finding her merriment contagious. He chased Milita without trying to catch her; he threatened her with mock severity, called her a robber, shouting "help," and so they ran from one studio to another. Before she disappeared, Milita stopped on the last doorsill, raising her gloved finger authoritatively:

"To-morrow, the rest. You mustn't forget. Really, papa, this is very important. Good-by; I shall expect you to-morrow."

And she disappeared, leaving in her father some of the merriment with which they had chased each other.

The twilight was gloomy. Renovales sat in front of his wife's portrait, gazing at that extravagantly beautiful head which seemed to him the most faithful of his portraits. His thoughts were lost in the shadow which rose from the corners and enveloped the canvases. Only on the windows trembled a pale, hazy light, cut across by the black lines of the branches outside.

Alone--alone forever. He had the affection of that big girl who had just gone away, merry, indifferent to everything which did not flatter her youthful vanity, her healthy beauty. He had the devotion of his friend Cotoner, who, like an old dog, could not live without seeing him, but was incapable of wholly devoting his life to him, and shared it between him and other friends, jealous of his Bohemian freedom.

And that was all. Very little.

On the verge of old age, he gazed at a cruel, reddish light which seemed to irritate his eyes; the solitary, monotonous road which awaited him--and at the end, death! No one was ignorant of that; it was the only certainty, and still he had spent the greater part of his life without thinking of it, without seeing it.

It was like one of those epidemics in distant lands which destroy millions of lives. People talk of it as of a definite fact, but without a start of horror, or a tremble of fear. "It is too far away; it will take it a long time to reach us."

He had often named Death, but with his lips; his thoughts had not grasped the meaning of the word, feeling that he was alive, bound to life by his dreams and desires.

Death stood at the end of the road; no one could avoid meeting it, but all are long in seeing it. Ambition, desire, love, the cruel animal needs distracted man in his course toward it; they were like the woods, valleys, blue sky and winding crystal streams which diverted the traveler, hiding the boundary of the landscape, the fatal goal, the black bottomless gorge to which all roads lead.

He was on the last days' march. The path of his life was growing desolate and gloomy; the vegetation was dwindling; the great groves diminished into sparse, miserable lichens. From the murky abyss came an icy breath; he saw it in the distance, he walked without escape toward its gorge. The fields of dreams with their sunlit heights which once bounded the horizon, were left behind and it was impossible to return. In this path no one retraced his steps.

He had wasted half his life, struggling for wealth and fame, hoping sometimes to receive their revenues in the pleasures of love. Die! Who thought of that? Then it was a remote, unmeaning threat. He believed that he was provided with a mission by Providence. Death would take no liberties with him, would not come till his work was finished. He still had many things to do. Well, all was done now; human desires did not exist for him. He had everything. No longer did fanciful towers rise before his steps, for him to assault. On the horizon, free from obstacles, appeared the great forgotten,--Death.

He did not want to see it. There was still a long journey on that road which might grow longer and longer, according to the strength of the traveler, and his legs were still strong.

But, ah, to walk, walk, year after year, with his gaze fixed on that murky abyss, contemplating it always at the edge of the horizon, unable to escape for an instant the certainty that it was there, was a superhuman torture which would force him to hurry his steps, to run in order to reach the end as soon as possible. Oh, for deceitful clouds which might veil the horizon, concealing the reality which embitters our bread, which casts its shadows over our souls and makes us curse the futility of our birth! Oh, for lying, pleasant illusions to make a paradise rise from the desert shadows of the last journey! Oh, for dreams!

And in his mind the poor master enlarged the last fancy of his desire; he connected with the beloved likeness of his dead wife all the flights of his imagination, longing to infuse into it new life with a part of his own. He piled up by handfuls the clay of the past, the mass of memory, to make it greater that it might occupy the whole way, shut off the horizon like a huge hill, hide till the last moment the murky abyss which ended the journey.

V

Renovales' behavior was a source of surprise and even scandal for all his friends.

The Countess of Alberca took especial care to let every one know that her only relation with the painter was a friendship which grew constantly colder and more formal.

"He's crazy," she said. "He's finished. There's nothing left of him but a memory of what he once was."

Cotoner in his unswerving friendship was indignant at hearing such comment on the famous master.

"He isn't drinking. All that people say about him is a lie; the usual legend about a celebrated man."

He had his own ideas about Mariano; he knew his longing for a stirring life, his desire to imitate the habits of youth in the prime of life, with a thirst for all the mysteries which he fancied were hidden in this evil life, of which he had heard without ever daring till then to join in them.

Cotoner accepted the master's new habits indulgently. Poor fellow!

"You are putting into action the pictures of 'The Rake's Progress,'" he said to his friend. "You're going the way of all virtuous men when they cease to be so, on the verge of old age. You are making a fool of yourself, Mariano."

But his loyalty led him to acquiesce in the new life of the master. At last he had given in to his requests and had come to live with him. With his few pieces of luggage he occupied a room in the house and cared for Renovales with almost paternal solicitude. The Bohemian showed great sympathy for him. It was the same old story: "He who does not do it at the beginning does it at the end," and Renovales, after a life of hard work, was rushing into a life of dissipation with the blindness of a youth, admiring vulgar pleasures, clothing them with the most fanciful seductions.

Cotoner frequently harassed him with complaints. What had he brought him to live at his house for? He deserted him for days at a time; he wanted to go out alone; he left him at home like a trusty steward. The old Bohemian posted himself minutely on his life. Often the students in the Art School, gathered at nightfall beside the entrance to the Academy, saw him going down the Calle de Alcalá, muffled in his cloak with an affected air of mystery that attracted attention.

"There goes Renovales. That one, the one in the cloak."

And they followed him out of curiosity--in his comings and goings through the broad street where he circled about like a silent dove as if he were waiting for something. Sometimes, no doubt tired of these evolutions, he went into a café and the curious admirers followed him, pressing their faces against the window-panes. They saw him drop into a chair, looking vaguely at the glass before him; always the same thing: brandy. Suddenly he would drink it at one gulp, pay the waiter and go out, with the haste of one who has swallowed a drug. And once more he would begin his explorations, peering with greedy eyes at all the women who passed alone, turning around to follow the course of run-down heels, the flutter of dark and mud-splashed skirts. At last he would start with sudden determination, he would disappear almost on the heel of some woman always of the same appearance. The boys knew the great artist's preference: little, weak, sickly women, graceful as faded flowers, with large eyes, dull and sorrowful.

A story of strange mental aberration was forming about him. His enemies repeated it in the studios; the throng which cannot imagine that celebrated men lead the same life as other people, and like to think that they are capricious, tormented by extraordinary habits, began to talk with delight about the hobby of the painter Renovales.

In all the houses of prostitution, from the middle class apartments, scattered in the most respectable streets, to the damp, ill-smelling dens which cast out their wares at night on the Calle de Peligros, circulated the story of a certain gentleman, provoking shouts of laughter. He always came muffled up mysteriously, following hastily the rustle of some poor starched skirts which preceded him. He entered the dark doorway with a sort of terror, climbed the winding staircase which seemed to smell of the residues of life, hastened the disrobing with eager hands, as if he had no time to waste, as if he was afraid of dying before he realized his desire, and all at once the poor women who looked askance at his feverish silence and the savage hunger which shone in his eyes, were tempted to laugh, seeing him drop dejectedly into a chair in silence, unmindful of the brutal words which they in their astonishment hurled at him; without paying any attention to their gestures and invitations, not coming out of his stupor till the woman, cold and somewhat offended, started to put on her clothes. "One moment more." This scene almost always ended with an expression of disgust, of bitter disappointment. Sometimes the poor puppets of flesh thought they saw in his eyes a sorrowful expression, as if he were going to weep. Then he fled precipitously, hidden under his cloak in sudden shame, with the firm determination not to return, to resist that demon of hungry curiosity which dwelt within him and could not see a woman's form in the street, without feeling a violent desire to disrobe it.

These stories came to Cotoner's ears. Mariano! Mariano! He did not dare to rebuke him openly for these shameful nocturnal adventures; he was afraid of a violent explosion of anger on the part of the master. He must direct him prudently. But what most aroused his old friend's censure was the people with whom the artist associated.

This false rejuvenation made him seek the company of the younger men and Cotoner cursed roundly when at the close of the theater he found him in a café, surrounded by his new comrades, all of whom might be his sons. Most of them were painters, novices, some with considerable talent, others whose only merit was their evil tongue, all of them proud of their friendship with the famous man, delighting like pigmies in treating him as an equal, jesting over his weaknesses. Great Heavens! Some of the bolder even went so far as to call him by his first name, treating him like a glorious failure, presuming to make comparisons between his paintings and what they would do when they could. "Mariano, art moves in different paths, now."

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself!" Cotoner would exclaim. "You look like a schoolmaster surrounded by children. You ought to be spanked. A man like you tolerating the insolence of those shabby fellows!"

Renovales' good nature was unshaken. They were very interesting; they amused him; he found in them the joy of youth. They went together to the theaters and music halls, they knew women; they knew where the good models were; with them he could enter many places where he would not venture to go alone. His years and ugliness passed unnoticed amid that youthful merry crowd.

"They are of service to me," the poor man said with a sly wink. "I am amused and they tell me lots of things. Besides, this isn't Rome; there are hardly any models; it is very difficult to find them and these boys are my guides."

And he went on to speak of his great artistic plans, of that picture of Phryne, with her divine nakedness, which had once more risen in his mind, of the beloved portrait which was still in the same condition as his brush had left it when he finished the head.

He was not working. His old energy, which had made painting a necessary element in his life, now found vent in words, in the desire to see everything, to know "new phases of life."

Soldevilla, his favorite pupil, found himself a target for the master's questions when he appeared at rare intervals in the studio.

"You must know good women, Soldevilla: You have been around a great deal in spite of that angel face of yours. You must take me with you. You must introduce me."

"Master!" the youth would exclaim in surprise, "it isn't yet six months since I was married! I never go out at night! How you joke!"

Renovates answered with a scornful glance. A fine life! No youth, no joy! He spent all his money on variegated waistcoats and high collars. What a perfect ant! He had married a rich woman, since he couldn't catch the master's daughter. Besides, he was an ungrateful scamp. Now he was joining the master's enemies, convinced that he could get nothing more out of him. He scorned him. It was too bad that his protection had caused him so much inconvenience! He was no artist.

And the master went back with new affection to his companions, those merry youths, slandering and disrespectful as they were. He recognized talent in them all.

The gossip about his extraordinary life reached even his daughter, with the rapid spread which anything prejudicial to a famous man acquires.

Milita scowled, trying to restrain the laughter which the strangeness of this change aroused. Her father becoming a rake!

"Papa! Papa!" she exclaimed in a comic tone of reproach.

And papa made excuses like a naughty, hypocritical little boy, increasing by his perturbation his daughter's desire to laugh.

López de Sosa seemed inclined to be indulgent toward his father-in-law. Poor old gentleman! All his life working, with a sick wife, who was very good and kind, to be sure, but who had embittered his life! She did well to die, and the artist did quite as well in making up for the time he had lost.

With the instinctive freemasonry of all those who lead an easy, merry life, the sport defended his father-in-law, supported him, found him more attractive, more congenial, as a result of his new habits. A man must not always stay shut up in his studio with the irritated air of a prophet, talking about things which nobody would understand.

They met each other in the evening during the last acts at the theaters and music halls, when the songs and dances were accompanied by the audience with a storm of cries and stamping. They greeted each other, the father inquired for Milita, they smiled with the sympathy of two good fellows and each went back to his group; the son-in-law to his club-mates in a box, still wearing the dress suits of the respectable gatherings from which they came--the painter to the orchestra seats with the long-haired young fellows who were his escort.

Renovales was gratified to see López de Sosa greeting the most fashionable, highest-priced _cocottes_ and smiling to comic-opera stars with the familiarity of an old friend.

That boy had excellent connections, and he regarded this as an indirect honor to his position as a father.

Cotoner frequently found himself dragged out of his orbit of serious, substantial dinners and evening-parties, which he continued to frequent in order not to lose his friendships which were his only source of income.

"You are coming with me to-night," the master would say mysteriously. "We will dine wherever you like, and afterwards I will show you something."

And he took him to the theater where he sat restless and impatient until the chorus came on the stage. Then he would nudge Cotoner, who was sunk in his seat, with his eyes wide open, but asleep inside, in the sweet pleasure of good digestion.

"Listen, look! the third from the right, the little girl--the one in the yellow shawl!"

"I see her. What about her?" said his friend in a sour voice.

"Look at her closely. Who does she look like? Who does she remind you of?"

Cotoner answered with a grunt of indifference. She probably looked like her mother. What did he care about such resemblances. But his astonishment aroused him from his quiet when he heard Renovales say he thought her a rare likeness of his wife, and was indignant at him because he did not recognize it.

"Why, Mariano, where are your eyes?" he exclaimed with no less sourness. "What resemblance is there between that scraggly girl with her starved face and your poor, dead wife. If you see a sorry-looking bean pole you will give it a name, Josephina,--and there's nothing more to say."

Although Renovales was at first irritated at his friend's blindness, he was finally convinced. He had probably deceived himself, as long as Cotoner did not find the likeness. He must remember the dead woman better than he himself; love did not disturb _his_ memory.

But a few days later he would once more besiege Cotoner with a mysterious air. "I have something to show you." And leaving the company of the merry lads who annoyed his old friend, he would take him to a music hall and point out another scandalous woman who was kicking a fling or doing a _danse du ventre_, and revealed her anemic emaciation under a mask of rouge.

"How about this one?" the master would implore, almost in terror as if he doubted his own eyes. "Don't you think she looks something like her? Doesn't she remind you of her?"

His friend broke out angrily:

"You're crazy. What likeness is there between that poor little woman, so good, so sweet and so refined, and this low creature?"

Renovales, after several failures which made him doubt the accuracy of his memory, did not dare to consult his friend. As soon as he tried to take him to a new show, Cotoner would draw back.

"Another discovery? Come, Mariano, get these ideas out of your head. If people found out about it, they would think that you were crazy."

But defying his wrath, the master insisted one evening with great obstinacy that he must go with him to see the "Bella Fregolina," a Spanish girl, who was singing at a little theater in the low quarter, and whose name was displayed in letters a meter high in the shop windows of Madrid. He had spent more than two weeks watching her every evening.

"I must have you see her, Pepe. Just for a minute. I beg you. I am sure that this time you won't say that I am mistaken."

Cotoner gave in, persuaded by the imploring tone of his friend. They waited for the appearance of the "Bella Fregolina" for a long time, watching dances and listening to songs accompanied by the howls of the audience. The wonder was reserved till the last. At last, with a sort of solemnity, amid a murmur of expectation, the orchestra began to play a piece well known to all the admirers of the "star," a ray of rosy light crossed the little stage and the "Bella" entered.

She was a slight little girl, so thin that she was almost emaciated. Her face, of a sweet melancholy beauty, was the most striking thing about her. Beneath her black dress, covered with silver threads, which spread out like a broad bell, you could see her slender legs, so thin that the flesh seemed hardly to cover the bones. Above the lace of her gown her skin, painted white, marked the slight curve of her breasts and the prominent collar bones. The first thing you saw about her were her eyes, large, clear, and girlish, but the eyes of a depraved girl, in which a licentious expression flickered, without, however, hurting their pure surface. She moved like an overgrown school-girl, arms akimbo, bashful and blushing and in this position she sang in a thin, high voice, obscene verses which contrasted strangely with her apparent timidity. This was her charm and the audience received her atrocious words with roars of delight, contenting themselves with this, without demanding that she dance, respecting her hieratic stiffness.

When the painter saw her appear he nudged his friend.

He did not dare to speak, waiting for his opinion anxiously. He followed his inspection out of the corner of his eye.

His friend was merciful.

"Yes, she is something like her. Her eyes,--figure,--expression; she reminds me of her. She is very much, like her. But the monkey face she is making now! The words! No, that destroys all likeness."

And as if he were angry that that little girl without any voice and without any sense of shame, should be compared to the sweet Josephina, he commented with sarcastic admiration on all the cynical expressions with which she ended her couplets.

"Very pretty! Very refined!"

But Renovales, deaf to these ironical remarks, absorbed in the contemplation of "Fregolina," kept on poking him and whispering:

"It's she, isn't it? Just exactly; the same body. And besides, the girl has some talent; she's funny."

Cotoner nodded ironically: "Yes, very." And when he found that Mariano wanted to stay for the next act and did not move from his seat, he though of leaving him. Finally he stayed, stretching out in his seat with the determination to have a nap, lulled by the music and the cries of the audience.

An impatient hand aroused him from his comfortable doze. "Pepe, Pepe." He shook his head and opened his eyes ill-naturedly. "What's the matter?" In Renovales' face he saw a honeyed, treacherous smile, some folly that he wanted to propose in the most pleasing manner.

"I thought we might go behind the scenes for a minute: we could see her at close range."

His friend answered him indignantly. Mariano thought he was a young buck; he forgot how he looked. That woman would laugh at them, she would assume the air of the Chaste Susanna, besieged by the two old men.

Renovales was silent, but in a little while he once more aroused his friend from his nap.

"You might go in alone, Pepe. You know more about these things than I do. You are more daring. You might tell her that I want to paint her portrait. Think, a portrait with my signature!"

Cotoner started to laugh, in sheer admiration of the princely simplicity with which the master gave him the commission.

"Thank you, sir; I am highly honored by such a favor, but I am not going. You confounded fool. Do you suppose that girl knows who Renovales is or has ever even heard of his name?"

The master expressed his astonishment with childlike simplicity.

"Man alive. I believe that the name Renovales--that what the papers have said--that my portraits---- Be frank, say that you don't want to."

And he was silent, offended at his companion's refusal and his doubt that his fame had reached this corner. Friends sometimes abuse us with unexpected scorn and great injustice.

At the end of the show the master felt that he must do something, not go away without sending the "Bella Fregolina" some evidence of his presence. He bought an elaborate basket of flowers from a flower vendor who was starting home, discouraged at the poor business. She should deliver it immediately to Señorita--"Fregolina."

"Yes, to Pepita," said the woman with a knowing air, as if she were one of her friends.

"And tell her it is from Señor Renovales--from Renovales, the painter."

The woman nodded, repeating the name. "Very well, Renovales," just as she would have said any other name. And without the least emotion she took the five dollars which the painter gave her.

"Five dollars! You idiot," muttered his friend, losing all respect for him.

Good Cotoner refused to go with him after that. In vain Renovales talked to him enthusiastically every night about that girl, deeply impressed by her different impersonations. Now she appeared in a pale pink dress, almost like some clothes put away in the closets of his house; now she entered in a hat trimmed with flowers and cherries, much larger, but still something like a certain straw hat which he could find amid the confusion of Josephina's old finery. Oh, how it reminded him of her! Every night he was struck with some renewed memory.

Lacking Cotoner's assistance, he went to see the "Bella" with some of the young fellows of his disrespectful court. These boys spoke of the "star" with respectful scorn, as the fox in the fable gazed at the distant grapes, consoling himself at the thought of their sourness. They praised her beauty, seen from a distance; according to them she was "lily-like"; she had the holy beauty of sin. She was out of their reach; she wore costly jewels and according to all reports had influential friends, all those young gentlemen in dress clothes who occupied the boxes during the last act, and waited for her at the stage door to take her to dinner.

Renovales was gnawed with impatience, unable to find a way to meet her. Every night he sent his little baskets of flowers, or huge bouquets. The "star" must be informed whence these gifts came, for she looked around the audience for the ugly elderly gentleman, deigning to grant him a smile.

One night the master saw López de Sosa speak to the singer. Perhaps his son-in-law was acquainted with her. And boldly as a lover, he waited for him when he came out to implore his help.

He wanted to paint her; she was a magnificent model for a certain work he had in mind. He said it blushingly, stammering, but López laughed at his timidity and seemed disposed to protect him.

"Oh, Pepita? A wonderful woman, in spite of the fact that she is on the decline. With all her school-girl face, if you could only see her at a party! She drinks like a fish. She's a terror!"

But afterwards, with a serious expression, he explained the difficulties. She "belonged" to one of his friends, a lad from the provinces who, eager to win notoriety, was losing one-half his fortune gambling at the Casino and was calmly letting that girl devour the other half,--she gave him some reputation. He would speak to her; they were old friends; nothing wrong--eh, father? It would not be hard to persuade her. This Pepita had a predilection for anything that was unusual; she was rather--romantic. He would explain to her who the great artist was, enhancing the honor of acting as his model.

"Don't stint on the money," said the master anxiously. "All that she wants. Don't be afraid to be generous."

One morning Renovales called Cotoner to talk to him with wild expressions of joy.

"She's going to come! She's going to come this very afternoon!"

The old painter looked surprised.

"Who?"

"The 'Bella Fregolina.' Pepita. My son-in-law tells me he has persuaded her. She will come this afternoon at three. He is coming with her himself."

Then he cast a worried glance at his workshop. For some time it had been deserted; it must be set in order.

And the servant on one side and the two artists on the other, began to tidy up the room hastily.

The portraits of Josephina and the canvas with nothing but her head were piled up in a corner by the master's feverish hands. What was the use of those phantoms when the real thing was going to appear. In their place he put a large white canvas, gazing at its untouched surface with hopeful eyes. What things he was going to do that afternoon! What a power for work he felt!

When the two artists were left alone, Renovales seemed restless, dissatisfied, constantly suspecting that something had been overlooked for this visit, toward which he looked with chills of anxiety. Flowers; they must get some flowers, fill all the old vases in the studio, create an atmosphere of delicate perfume.

And Cotoner ran through the garden with the servant, plundered the greenhouse and came in with an armful of flowers, obedient and submissive as a faithful friend, but with a sarcastic reproach in his eyes. All that for the "Bella Fregolina"! The master was cracked; he was in his second childhood! If only this visit would cure him of his mania, which was almost madness!

Afterwards the master had further orders. He must provide on one of the tables in the studio sweets, champagne, anything good he could find. Cotoner spoke of sending for the valet, complaining of the tasks which were imposed on him as a result of the visit of this girl of the guileless smile and the vile songs, who stood with arms akimbo.

"No, Pepe," the master implored. "Listen--I don't want the valet to know. He talks afterward; my daughter probes him with questions."

Cotoner went away with a resigned expression and when he returned an hour later, he found Renovales in the model's room arranging some clothes.

The old painter lined up his packages on the table. He put the confectionery in antique plates and took the bottles out of their wrappers.

"You are served, sir," he said with ironical respect. "Do you wish anything else, sir? The whole family is in a state of revolution over this noble lady; your son-in-law is bringing her; I am acting as your valet; all you need now is to send for your daughter to help her undress."

"Thanks, Pepe, thanks ever so much," said the master with naive gratitude, apparently undisturbed by his jests.

At luncheon time Cotoner saw him come into the dining-room with his hair carefully combed, his mustache curled, wearing his best suit with a rose in the buttonhole. The Bohemian laughed boisterously. The last straw! He was crazy; they would make sport of him!

The master scarcely touched the meal. Afterwards he walked up and down alone in the studio. How slowly the time went! At each turn through the three studios he looked at the hands of an old clock of Saxon china, which stood on a table of colored marble, with its back reflected in a tall, Venetian mirror.

It was already three. The master wondered if she was not going to come. Quarter past three,--half-past three. No, she was not coming; it was past the time. Those women who live amid obligations and demands, without a minute to themselves!

Suddenly he heard steps and Cotoner entered.

"She is here; here she comes. Good luck, master. Have a good time! I guess you have imposed on me long enough and will not expect me to stay."

He went out waving him an ironical farewell and a little later Renovales heard López de Sosa's voice, approaching slowly, explaining to his companion the pictures and furniture which attracted her attention.

They entered. The "Bella Fregolina" looked astonished; she seemed intimidated by the majestic silence of the studio. What a big, princely house, so different from all those she had seen! That ancient, solid, historic luxury with its rare furniture filled her with fear! She looked at Renovales with great respect. He seemed to her more distinguished than that other man whom she had seen indistinctly in the orchestra of her little theater. He was awe-inspiring, as if he were a great personage, different from all the men with whom she had had to do. To her fear was added a sort of admiration. How much money that old boy must have, living in such style!

Renovales, too, was deeply moved when he saw her so close at hand.

At first he hesitated. Was she really like the other? The paint on her face disconcerted him--the layer of rouge with black lines about the eyes--visible through the veil. The _other_ did not paint. But when he looked at her eyes, the striking resemblance rose again, and starting from them he gradually restored the beloved face under the layers of pomade.

The "star" examined the canvases which covered the walls. How pretty! And did this gentleman do all that? She wanted to see herself like that, proud and beautiful in a canvas. Did he truly want to paint her? And she drew herself up vainly, delighted that people thought she was beautiful, that she would enjoy the emotion until then unknown of seeing her image reproduced by a great artist.

López de Sosa excused himself to his father-in-law. She was to blame for their being late. You could never get a woman like that to hurry. She went to bed at daybreak; he had found her in bed.

Then he said good-by, understanding the embarrassment his presence might cause. Pepita was a good girl, she was dazzled by his works and the appearance of the house. The master could do what he wanted with her.

"Well, little girl, you stay here. The gentleman is my father; I told you already. Be sure and be a good girl."

And he went out, followed by the forced laugh of them both, who greeted this recommendation with uneasy merriment.

A long and painful silence followed. The master did not know what to say. Timidity and emotion weighed on his will. She seemed no less disturbed. That great room, so silent and imposing with its massive, superb decorations, different from anything she had seen, frightened her. She felt the vague terror which precedes an unknown operation. Besides, she was disturbed by the man's glowing eyes fixed on her, with a quiver on his cheeks and a twitching of his lips, as if they were tormented by thirst.

She soon recovered from her timidity. She was used to these moments of shamefaced silence which came with the lone meeting of two strangers. She knew these interviews which begin hesitatingly and end in rough familiarity.

She looked around with a professional smile, eager to end the unpleasant situation as soon as possible.

"When you will. Where shall I undress?"

Renovales started at the sound of her voice, as if he had forgotten that that image could speak. The simplicity with which she dispensed with explanations surprised him likewise.

His son-in-law did things well; he had brought her well coached, callous to all surprises.

The master showed her the way to the model's room and remained outside, prudently, turning his head without knowing why, so as not to see through the half-opened door. There was a long silence, broken by the rustle of falling clothes, the metallic click of buttons and hooks. Suddenly her voice came to the master, smothered, distant with a sort of timidity.

"My stockings too? Must I take them off?"

Renovales knew this objection of all models when they undressed for the first time. López de Sosa, carrying his desire of pleasing his father to the extreme, had spoken to her of giving her body wholly and she undressed without asking any further explanations, with the calm of accepted duty, thinking that her presence there was absurd for any other purpose.

The painter came out of his silence; he called to her uneasily. She must not stay undressed. In the room there were clothes for her to put on. And without turning his head, reaching his arm through the half open door he pointed out blindly what he had left. There was a pink dress, a hat, shoes, stockings, a shirt.

Pepita protested when she saw these cast-off garments, showing an aversion to putting on those underclothes which seemed worn and old.

"The shirt, too? The stockings? No, the dress is enough."

But the master begged her impatiently. She must put them all on; his painting demanded it. The long silence of the girl proved that she was complying, putting on these old garments, overcoming her repugnance.

When she came out of the room she smiled with a sort of pity, as if she were laughing at herself. Renovales drew back, stirred by his own work, bewildered, feeling his temples throbbing, fancying that the pictures and furniture were whirling about him.

Poor "Fregolina"! What a delightful clown! She felt like laughing at the thought of the storm of cries which would burst out in her theater if she should appear on the stage dressed in this fashion, of the jests of her friends if she should come into one of their dinners in these clothes of twenty years ago. She did not know these styles, and to her they seemed to belong to a remote antiquity. The master leaned over the back of a chair.

"Josephina! Josephina!"

It was she, such as he kept her in his memory--as she was that happy summer in the Roman mountains, in her pink dress and that rustic hat which gave her the dainty air of a village girl in the opera. Those fashions at which the younger generation laughed were for him the most beautiful, the most artistic that feminine taste had ever produced; they recalled the spring of his life.

"Josephina! Josephina!"

He remained silent, for these exclamations were born and died in his thoughts. He did not dare to move or speak, for fear this apparition of his dreams would vanish. She, smiling, was delighted at the effect her appearance had on the painter and seeing her reflection in a distant mirror, recognized that in this strange costume she did not look at all badly.

"Where shall I go? Sitting or standing?"

The master could hardly speak; his voice was hoarse, labored.

She could pose as she wished. And she sat down in a chair adopting a posture which she considered very graceful--her cheek on one hand, her legs crossed, just as she was wont to sit in the green room of the theater, showing a bit of open-work pink silk stocking under her skirt. That too reminded the painter of the other.

It was she! She sat before his eyes in bodily form, with the perfume of the form he loved.

From instinct, from habit, he took up his palette and a brush stained with black, trying to trace the outlines of that figure. Ah, his hand was old, heavy, trembling! Where had his old time skill fled, his drawing, his striking qualities? Had he really ever painted? Was he truly the painter Renovales? He had suddenly forgotten everything. His head seemed empty, his hand paralyzed, the white canvas filled him with a terror of the unknown. He did not know how to paint; he could not paint. His efforts were useless; his mind was deadened. Perhaps,--some other day. Now his ears hummed, his face was pale, his ears were red, purple, as if they were on the point of dripping blood. In his mouth he felt the torment of a deathly thirst.

The "Bella Fregolina" saw him throw down his palette and come toward her with a wild expression.

But she felt no fear; she knew those distorted faces. This sudden rush was no doubt part of the program; she was warned when she went there after her friendly conversation with the son-in-law. That gentleman, so serious and so imposing, was like all the men she knew, as brutal as the rest.

She saw him come to her with open arms, take her in a close embrace, fall at her feet with a hoarse cry, as if he were stifling; and she, gently and sympathetically encouraged him, bending her head, offering her lips with an automatic loving expression which was the implement of her profession.

The kiss was enough to overcome the master completely.

"Josephina! Josephina!"

The perfume of the happy days rose from her clothes, surrounding her adorable person. It was her form, her flesh! He was going to die at her feet, suffocated by the immense desire that swelled within him. It was she; her very eyes--her eyes! And as he raised his glance to lose himself in their soft pupils, to gaze at himself in their trembling mirror, he saw two cold eyes, which examined him, half closed with professional curiosity, taking a scornful delight from their calm height in this intoxication of the flesh, this madness which groveled, moaning with desire.

Renovales was thunderstruck with surprise; he felt something icy run down his back, paralyzing him; his eyes were veiled with a cloud of disappointment and sorrow.

Was it really Josephina whom he had in his arms? It was her body, her perfume, her clothes, her beauty, pale as a dying flower. But no, it was not she! Those eyes! In vain did they look at him differently, alarmed at this sudden reaction; in vain they softened with a tender light, trained by habit. The deceit was useless; he saw beyond, he penetrated through those bright windows into the depths; he found only emptiness. The other's soul was not there. That maddening perfume no longer moved him; it was a false essence. He had before him merely a reproduction of the beloved vase, but the incense, the soul, lost forever.

Renovales, standing up, drew away from her, looking at that woman with terror in his eyes, and finally threw himself on a couch, with his face in his hands.

The girl, hearing him sob, was afraid and ran toward the models' room to take off those clothes, to flee. The man must be mad.

The master was weeping. Farewell, youth! Farewell desire! Farewell dreams; enchanting sirens of life, that have fled forever. Useless the search, useless the struggle in the solitude of life. Death had him in his grasp, he was his and only through him could he renew his youth. These images were useless. He could not find another to call up the memory of the dead like this hired woman whom he had held in his arms--and still, it was not she!

At the supreme moment, on the verge of reality, that indefinable something had vanished, that something which had been enclosed in the body of his Josephina, of his _maja_, whom he had worshiped in the nights of his youth.

Immense, irreparable disappointment flooded his body with the icy calm of old age.

Fall, ye towers of illusion! Sink, ye castles of fancy, built with the longing to make the way fair, to hide the horizon! The path still remained unbroken, barren and deserted. In vain would he sit by the roadside, putting off the hour of his departure, in vain would he bow his head that he might not see. The longer his rest, the longer his fearful torment. At every hour he was destined to gaze at the dreaded end of the last journey--unclouded, undisturbed--the dwelling from which there is no return--the black, greedy abyss--death!

FOOTNOTE:

[A] The life of this character is the theme of _La Horda_, by the same author.

End of Project Gutenberg's Woman Triumphant, by Vicente Blasco Ibañez