e, talking to relieve the convent-like stillness of the studio
with her words and laughter.

The painter heard the story of her labors as president of the "Women's
League," of the great things she meant to do in the holy undertaking for
the emancipation of the sex. And, in passing, led on by her desire of
ridiculing all women, she gaily made sport of her co-workers in the
great project; unknown literary women, school teachers, whose lives were
embittered by their ugliness, painters of flowers and doves, a throng of
poor women with extravagant hats and clothes that looked as though they
were hung on a bean-pole; feminine Bohemians, rebellious and rabid
against their lot, who were proud to have her as their leader and who
made it a point to call her "Countess" in sonorous tones at every other
word, in order to flatter themselves with the distinction of this
friendship. The Alberca woman was greatly amused at her following of
admirers; she laughed at their intolerance and their proposals.

"Yes, I know what it is," said Renovales breaking his long silence. "You
want to annihilate us, to reign over man, whom you hate."

The countess laughed at the recollection of the fierce feminism of some
of her acolytes. As most of them were homely, they hated feminine beauty
as a sign of weakness. They wanted the woman of the future to be without
hips, without breasts, straight, bony, muscular, fitted for all sorts of
manual labor, free from the slavery of love and reproduction. "Down with
feminine fat!"

"What a frightful idea! Don't you think so, Mariano?" she continued.
"Woman, straight in front and straight behind, with her hair cut short
and her hands hardened, competing with men in all sorts of struggles!
And they call that emancipation! I know what men are; if they saw us
looking like that, in a few days they would be beating us."

No, she was not one of them. She wanted to see a woman triumph, but by
increasing still more her charm and her fascination. If they took away
her beauty what would she have left? She wanted her to be man's equal in
intelligence, his superior by the magic of her beauty.

"I don't hate men, Mariano, I am very much a woman, and I like them.
What's the use of denying it?"

"I know it, Concha, I know it," said the painter, with a malicious
meaning.

"What do you know? Lies, gossip that people tell about me because I am
not a hypocrite and am not always wearing a gloomy expression."

And led on by