ales praised the
Flemish woman. Artists formed a family by themselves; morality and the
popular prejudices were meant for other people. They lived under the
jurisdiction of Beauty, regarding as natural what other people looked on
as a sin.

Josephina protested against her husband's wishes with a playful
indignation but she allowed him to admire her. Her abandon increased
every day. Mornings, when she got up, she remained undressed longer,
prolonging her toilette while the artist walked around her, praising her
various beauties. "That is Rubens, pure and simple, that's Titian's
color. Look, little girl, lift up your arms, like this. Oh, you are the
_Maja_, Goya's little _Maja_." And she submitted to him with a gracious
pout, as if she relished the expression of worship and disappointment
which her husband wore at possessing her as a woman and not possessing
her as a model.

One afternoon when a scorching wind seemed to stifle the countryside
with its breath, Josephina capitulated. They were in their room, with
the windows closed, trying to escape the terrible sirocco by shutting
it out and putting on thin clothes. She did not want to see her husband
with such a gloomy face nor listen to his complaints. As long as he was
crazy and was set on his whim, she did not dare to oppose him. He could
paint her; but only a study, not a picture. When he was tired of
reproducing her flesh on the canvas they would destroy it,--just as if
he had done nothing.

The painter said "yes" to everything, eager to have his brush in hand as
soon as possible, before the beauty he craved. For three days he worked
with a mad fever, with his eyes unnaturally wide open, as if he meant to
devour the graceful outlines with his sight. Josephina, accustomed now
to being naked, posed with unconscious abandon, with that feminine
shamelessness which hesitates only at the first step. Oppressed by the
heat, she slept while her husband kept on painting.

When the work was finished, Josephina could not help admiring it. "How
clever you are! But am I really like that, so pretty?" Mariano showed
his satisfaction. It was his masterpiece, his best. Perhaps in all his
life he might never find another moment like that, of prodigious mental
intensity, what people commonly call inspiration. She continued to
admire herself in the canvas, just as she did some mornings in the great
mirror in the bedroom. She praised the various parts of her beauty with
frank immodes