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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 impa.s.sibility.

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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 hoa.r.s.ely, 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 pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed 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!"