s brush; they
spent the time chatting. At other times the master listened in silence
while she with her ceaseless volubility made fun of her friends and
related their secret defects, their most intimate habits, their
mysterious amours, with a kind of relish, as if all women were her
enemies. In the midst of one of these confidential talks, she stopped
and said with a shy expression and an ironical accent:

"But I am probably shocking you, Mariano. You, who are a good husband, a
staunch family-man."

Renovales felt tempted to choke her. She was making fun of him; she
looked on him as a man different from the rest of men, a sort of monk of
painting. Eager to wound her, to return the blow, he interrupted once
brutally in the midst of her merciless gossip.

"Well, they talk about you, too, Concha. They say things that wouldn't
be very pleasing to the count."

He expected an outburst of anger, a protest, and all that resounded in
the silence of the studio was a merry, reckless laugh that lasted a
long time, stopping occasionally, only to begin again. Then she grew
pensive, with the gentle sadness of women who are "misunderstood." She
was very unhappy. She could tell him everything because he was a good
friend. She had married when she was still a child; a terrible mistake.
There was something else in the world besides the glare of fortune, the
splendor of luxury and that count's coronet, which had stirred her
school-girl's mind.

"We have the right to a little love, and if not love, to a little joy.
Don't you think so, Mariano?"

Of course he thought so. And he declared it in such a way, looking at
Concha with alarming eyes, that she finally laughed at his frankness and
threatened him with her finger.

"Take care, master. Don't forget that Josephina is my friend and if you
go astray, I'll tell her everything."

Renovales was irritated at her disposition, always restless and
capricious as a bird's, quite as likely to sit down beside him in warm
intimacy as to flit away with tormenting banter.

Sometimes she was aggressive, teasing the artist from her very first
words, as had just happened that afternoon.

They were silent for a long time--he, painting with an absent-minded
air, she watching the movement of the brush, buried in an armchair in
the sweet calm of rest.

But the Alberca woman was incapable of remaining silent long. Little by
little her usual chatter began, paying no attention to the painter's
silenc