rival that
overshadowed her with her beauty. And there was no remedy for this. She
was married to a man who, as long as he lived, would be faithful to his
religion of beauty. How well she remembered the days when she had
refused to allow her husband to paint her youthful body! If youth and
beauty would but come back to her, she would recklessly cast off all her
veils, would stand in the middle of the studio as arrogantly as a
bacchante, crying,

"Paint! Satisfy yourself with my flesh, and whenever you think of your
eternal beloved, whom you call Beauty, fancy that you see her with my
face, that she has my body!"

It was a terrible misfortune to be the wife of an artist. She would
never marry her daughter to a painter; she would rather see her dead.
Men who carry with them the demon of form, cannot live in peace and
happiness except with a companion who is eternally young, eternally
fair.

Her husband's fidelity made her desperate. That chaste artist was always
musing over the memory of naked beauties, fancying pictures he did not
dare to paint for fear of her. With her sick woman's penetration, she
seemed to read this longing in her husband's face. She would have
preferred certain infidelity, to see him in love with another woman, mad
with passion. He might return from such a wandering outside the bonds of
matrimony, wearied and humble, begging her forgiveness; but from the
other, he would never return.

When Renovates discovered the cause of her sadness, he tenderly
undertook to cure his wife's mental disorder. He avoided speaking of his
artistic interests in her presence; he discovered terrible defects in
the fair ladies who sought him as a portrait painter; he praised
Josephina's spiritual beauty; he painted pictures of her, putting her
features on the canvas, but beautifying them with, subtle skill.

She smiled, with that eternal condescension that a woman has for the
most stupendous, most shameful deceits, as long as they flatter her.

"It's you," said Renovales, "your face, your charm, your air of
distinction. I really don't think I have made you as beautiful as you
are."

She continued to smile, but soon her look grew hard, her lips tightened
and the shadow spread little by little across her face.

She fixed her eyes on the painter's as if she were scrutinizing his
thoughts.

It was a lie. Her husband was flattering her; he thought he loved her,
but only his flesh was faithful. The invincible enemy, t