"And why do you not love me?" said the master tearfully. "I worship you, the tables would be turned. I would be the one to surround you with constant idolatry, and you would let me worship you, caress you, as I would an idol, my head bowed at its feet."

Concha laughed again, mocking the artist's hoa.r.s.e voice, his pa.s.sionate expression, and his eager eyes.

"Why don't I love you? Master, don't be childish. There's no use in asking such things, you cannot dictate to Love. I do not like you as you want me to, because it is impossible. Be satisfied to be my best friend.

You know I show a confidence in you that I do not show to Monteverde.

Yes, I tell you things I would never tell him."

"But the other part!" exclaimed the painter violently. "What I need, what I am hungry for,--you, your beauty, real love!"

"Master, contain yourself," she said with affected modesty. "How well I know you! You're going to say some of those horrid things that men always say when they rave over a woman. I'm going away so as not to hear you."

Then she added with maternal seriousness, as if she wanted to reprimand his violence:

"I am not so crazy as people think. I consider the consequences of my actions carefully. Mariano, look at yourself, think of your position. A wife, a daughter who will marry one of these days, the prospect of being a grandfather. And you still think of such follies! I could not accede to your proposal even if I loved you. How terrible! To deceive Josephina, the friend of my school-days! Poor thing, so gentle, so kind,--always ill. No, Mariano, never. A man cannot enter such compromising affairs, unless he is free. I could never feel like loving you. Friends, nothing more than friends!"

"Well, we will not be that," exclaimed Renovales impetuously. "I will leave your house forever. I will not see you any longer. I will do anything to forget you. It is an intolerable torment. My life will be calmer if I do not see you."

"You will not go away," said Concha quietly, certain of her power. "You will remain beside me just as you always have, if you really like me, and I shall have in you my best friend. Don't be a baby, master, you will see that there is something charming about our friendship that you do not understand now. I shall give you something that the rest do not know,--intimacy, confidence."

And as she said this, she put one hand on the painter's arm and drew closer to him, searching him with her eyes in which there was a strange, mysterious light.

A horn sounded near them; there was swift rush of heavy wheels. An automobile shot past them at full speed, following the highroad.

Renovales tried to make out the figures in the car, hardly larger than dolls in the distance. Perhaps it was Lopez de Sosa, who was driving, perhaps his wife and daughter were those two little figures, wrapped in veils, who occupied the seats.

The possibility of Josephina's having pa.s.sed through the background of the landscape without seeing him, without noticing that he was there, forgetful of everything, an imploring lover, overcame him with the sense of remorse.

They remained motionless for a long while in silence, leaning on the rough wooden railing, watching through the colonnade of the trees the bright, cherry-red sun, as it sank, lighting up the horizon with a blaze of fire. The leaden clouds, seeing it on the point of death, a.s.sailed it with treacherous greed.

Concha watched the sunset with the interest that a sight but seldom seen arouses.

"Look at that huge cloud, master. How black it is! It looks like a dragon; no, a hippopotamus; see its round paws, like towers. How it runs! It's going to eat the sun. It's eating it! It has swallowed it now!"

The landscape grew dark. The sun had disappeared inside of that monster that filled the horizon. Its waving back was edged with silver, and as if it could not hold the burning star; it broke below, pouring out a rain of pale rays. Then, burned by this digestion, it vanished in smoke, was torn into black tufts, and once more the red disc appeared, bathing sky and earth with gold, peopling the water of the pools with restless fiery fishes.

Renovales, leaning on the railing with one elbow beside the countess, breathed her subtle fragrance, felt the warm touch of her firm body.

"Let's go back, master," she said with a suggestion of uneasiness in her voice. "I feel cold. Besides, with a companion like you, it's impossible to stay still."

And she hastened her step, realizing from her experience with men the danger of remaining alone with Renovales. His pale, excited face warned her that he was likely to make some reckless, impetuous advance.

In the square of Cano Gordo they pa.s.sed a couple going slowly down the hill, very close together, not yet daring to walk arm in arm, but ready to put their arms around each other's waists as soon as they disappeared in the next path. The young man carried his cloak under his arm, as proudly as a gallant in the old comedies; she, small and pale, without any beauty except that of youth, was wrapped in a poor cloak and walked with her simple eyes fixed on her companion's.

"Some student with his girl," said Renovales. "They are happier than we are, Concha."

"We are getting old, master," she said with feigned sadness, excluding herself from old age, loading the whole burden of years on her companion.

Renovales turned toward her in a final outburst of protest.

"Why should I not be as happy as that boy? Haven't I a right to it?

Concha, you do not know who I am; you forget it, accustomed as you are to treat me like a child. I am Renovales, the painter, the famous master. I am known all over the world."

And he spoke of his fame with brutal indelicacy, growing more and more irritated at her coldness, displaying his renown like a mantle of light that should blind women and make them fall at his feet. And a man like him had to submit to being put off for that simpleton of a doctor?

The countess smiled with pity. Her eyes, too, revealed a sort of compa.s.sion. The fool! The child! How absurd men of talent were!

"Yes, you are a great man, master. That is why I am proud of your friendship. I even admit that it gives me some importance. I like you. I feel admiration for you."

"No, not admiration, Concha, love! To belong to each other! Complete love."

She continued to laugh.

"Oh, my boy; Love!"

Her eyes seemed to speak to him ironically. Love does not distinguish talents; it is ignorant and therefore boasts of its blindness. It only perceives the fragrance of youth, of life in its flower.

"We shall be friends, Mariano, friends and nothing more. You will grow accustomed to it and find our affection dear. Don't be material; it doesn't seem as if you were an artist. Idealism, master, that is what you need."

And she continued to talk to him from the heights of her pity, until they parted near the place where her carriage was waiting for her.

"Friends, Mariano, nothing more than friends, but true friends."

When Concha had gone, Renovales walked in the shadows of the twilight, gesticulating and clenching his fists, until he left Moncloa. Finding himself alone, he was again filled with wrath and insulted the countess mentally, now that he was free from the loving subjection that he suffered in her presence. How she amused herself with him! How his friends would laugh to see him helplessly submissive to that woman who had belonged to so many! His pride made him insist on conquering her, at any cost, even of humiliation and brutality. It was an affair of honor to make her his, even if it were only once, and then to take revenge by repelling her, throwing her at his feet, and saying with a sovereign air, "That is what I do to people who resist me."

But then he realized his weakness. He would always be beaten by that woman who looked at him coldly, who never lost her calm and considered him an inferior being. His dejection made him think of his family, of his sick wife, and the duties that bound him to her, and he felt the bitter joy of the man who sacrifices himself, taking up his cross.

His mind was made up. He would flee from the woman. He would not see her again.

III

And he did not see her; he did not see her for two days. But on the third there came a letter in a long blue envelope scented with a perfume that made him tremble.

The countess complained of his absence in affectionate terms. She needed to see him, she had many things to tell him. A real love-letter which the artist hastened to hide, for fear that if any one read it, he would suspect what was not yet true.

Renovales was indignant.

"I will go to see her," he said to himself, walking up and down the studio. "But it will be only to give her a piece of my mind, and have done with her once and for all. If she thinks she is going to play with me, she is mistaken; she doesn't know that, when I want to be, I am like stone."

Poor master! While in one corner of his mind he was formulating this cruel determination to be a man of stone, in the other a sweet voice was murmuring seductively:

"Go quickly, take advantage of the opportunity. Perhaps she has repented. She is waiting for you; she is going to be yours."

And the artist hastened to the countess's anxiously. Nothing. She complained of his absence with affected sadness. She liked him so much!

She needed to see him, she could not have any peace as long as she felt that he was offended with her on account of the other afternoon. And they spent nearly two hours together in the private room she used as an office, until at the end of the afternoon the serious friends of the countess began to arrive, her coterie of mute worshipers and last of all Monteverde with the calm of a man who has nothing to fear.