he eternal
beloved, was mistress of his mind.

Tortured by this mental unfaithfulness and by the rage which her
helplessness produced, she would gradually fall into one of the nervous
storms that broke out in a shower of tears and a thunder of insults and
recriminations.

Renovales' life was a hell at the very time when he possessed the glory
and wealth which he had dreamed of so many years, building on them his
hope of happiness.

IV

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when the painter went home after
his luncheon with the Hungarian.

As he entered the dining-room, before going to the studio, he saw two
women with their hats and veils on who looked as if they were getting
ready to go out. One of them, as tall as the painter, threw her arms
around his neck.

"Papa, dear, we waited for you until nearly two o'clock. Did you have a
good luncheon?"

And she kissed him noisily, rubbing her fresh, rosy cheeks against the
master's gray beard.

Renovales smiled good naturedly under this shower of caresses. Ah, his
Milita! She was the only joy in that gloomy, showy house. It was she who
sweetened that atmosphere of tedious strife which seemed to emanate from
the sick woman. He looked at his daughter with an air of comic
gallantry.

"Very pretty; yes, I swear you are very pretty to-day. You are a perfect
Rubens, my dear, a brunette Rubens. And where are we going to show off?"

He looked with a father's pride at that strong, rosy body, in which the
transition to womanhood was marked by a sort of passing delicacy--the
result of her rapid growth--and a dark circle around her eyes. Her soft,
mysterious glance was that of a woman who is beginning to understand the
meaning of life. She dressed with a sort of exotic elegance; her clothes
had a masculine appearance; her mannish collar and tie were in keeping
with the rigid energy of her movements, with her wide-soled English
boots, and the violent swing of her legs that opened her skirts like a
compass when she walked, more intent on speed and a heavy step than on a
graceful carriage. The master admired her healthy beauty. What a
splendid specimen! The race would not die out with her. She was like
him, wholly like him; if he had been a woman, he would have been like
his Milita.

She kept on talking, without taking her arms from her father's
shoulders, with her eyes, tremulous like molten gold, fixed on the
master.

She was going for her daily walk with "Miss,