de of laurels and its gold letters was a
brothel. One of these fine days she would come into the studio and throw
them into the street to have their pictures painted somewhere else.

"For God's sake, Josephina," Renovales murmured with a troubled voice,
"don't talk like that. Don't think of such outrageous things. I don't
see how you can talk that way. Milita will hear us."

Now that her nervous anger was exhausted, Josephina would burst into
tears and Renovales would have to leave the table and take her to bed,
where she lay, crying out for the hundredth time that she wanted to die.

This life was even more intolerable because he was faithful to his wife,
because his love, mingled with habit and routine, kept him firmly
devoted to her.

At the end of the afternoon, several of his friends used to gather in
his studio, among them the jolly Cotoner who had moved to Madrid. When
the twilight crept in through the huge window and made them all prone to
friendly confidences, Renovales always made the same statement.

"As a boy I had my good times just like anyone else, but since I was
married I have never had anything to do with any woman except my own
wife. I am proud to say so."

And the big man drew himself up to his full height and stroked his
beard, as proud of his faithfulness to his wife as other men are of
their good fortune in love.

When they talked about beautiful women in his presence, or looked at
portraits of great foreign beauties, the master did not conceal his
approval.

"Very beautiful! Very pretty to paint!"

His enthusiasm over beauty never went beyond the limits of art. There
was only one woman in the world for him, his wife; the others were
models.

He, who carried in his mind a perfect orgy of flesh, who worshiped the
nude with religious fervor, reserved all his manly homage for his wife
who grew constantly more sickly, more gloomy, and waited with the
patience of a lover for a moment of calm, a ray of sunlight among the
incessant storms.

The doctors, who admitted their inability to cure the nervous disorder
that was consuming the wife, had hopes of a sudden change and
recommended to the husband that he should be extremely kind to her. This
only increased his patient gentleness. They attributed the nervous
trouble to the birth and nursing of the child, that had broken her weak
health; they suspected, too, the existence of some unknown cause that
kept the sick woman in constant excitement.