ou have found a
husband who worships you. Master, take lots of care of her. Be good to
her so that she may get well and pretty. Take care of her or we shall
quarrel."

VI

Renovales had finished reading the evening papers in bed as was his
custom, and before putting out the light he looked at his wife.

She was awake. Above the fold of the sheet he saw her eyes, unusually
wide open, fixed on him with a hostile stare, and the little tails of
her hair, that stuck out under the lace of her night-cap straight and
sedate.

"Aren't you asleep?" the painter asked in an affectionate tone, in which
there was some anxiety.

"No."

And after this hard monosyllable, she turned over in the bed with her
back to him.

Renovales remained in the darkness, with his eyes open, somewhat
disturbed, almost afraid of that body, hidden under the same sheet,
lying a short distance from him, which avoided touching him, shrinking
with manifest repulsion.

Poor little girl! Renovales' better nature felt tormented with a painful
remorse. His conscience was a cruel beast that had awakened, angry and
implacable, tearing him with scornful teeth. The events of the afternoon
meant nothing, a moment of thoughtlessness, of weakness. Surely the
countess would not remember it and he, for his part, was determined not
to slip again.

A pretty situation for a father of a family, for a man whose youth was
past, compromising himself in a love affair, getting melancholy in the
twilight, kissing a white hand like an enamored troubadour! Good God!
How his friends would have laughed to see him in that posture! He must
purge himself of that romanticism which sometimes mastered him. Every
man must follow his fate, accepting life as he found it. He was born to
be virtuous, he must put up with the relative peace of his domestic
life, must accept its limited pleasures as a compensation for the
suffering his wife's illness caused him. He would be content with the
feasts of his thought, with the revels in beauty at the banquets served
by his fancy. He would keep his flesh faithful though it amounted to
perpetual privation. Poor Josephina! His remorse at a moment of weakness
which he considered a crime, impelled him to draw closer to her, as if
he sought in her warmth and contact a mute forgiveness.

Her body, burning with a slow fever, drew away as it felt his touch, it
shriveled like those timid molluscs that shrink and hide at the least
touch. She