r, and around them a group of children, many
children, some of them with their fingers in their noses, others rolling
on their backs on the floor, like playful kittens, the older ones with
pencils in their hands, making caricatures of the old couple and all
shouting in a chorus of loving cries: "Grandpa, dear! Pretty grandma!"

In his sleepy fancy, the picture grew indistinct and was blotted out. He
no longer saw the figures, but the loving cry continued to sound in his
ears, dying away in the distance.

Then it began to increase again, drew slowly nearer, but it was a
complaint, a howl like that of the victim that feels the sacrificer's
knife at its throat.

The artist, terrified by this moan, thought that some dark animal, some
monster of the night was tossing beside him, brushing him with its
tentacles, pushing him with the bony points of its joints.

He awoke and with his brain still cloudy with sleep, the first sensation
he experienced was a tremble of fear and surprise, reaching from his
head to his feet. The invisible monster was beside him, dying, kicking
violently, sticking him with its angular body. The howl tore the
darkness like a death rattle.

Renovales, aroused by his fear, awoke completely. That cry came from
Josephina. His wife was tossing about in the bed, shrieking while she
gasped for breath.

The electric button snapped and the white, hard light of the lamp showed
the little woman in the disorder of her nervous outbreak; her weak limbs
painfully convulsed, her eyes, staring, dull with an uncanny vacancy;
her mouth contracted, dripping with foam.

The husband, dazed at this awakening, tried to take her in his arms, to
hold her gently against him, as if his warmth might restore her calm.

"Let me--alone," she cried brokenly. "Let go of me. I hate you!"

And though she asked him to let go of her, she was the one who clung to
him, digging her fingers into his throat, as if she wanted to strangle
him. Renovates, insensible to this clutch which made little impression
on his strong neck, murmured with sad kindness:

"Squeeze! Don't be afraid of hurting me. Relieve your feelings!"

Her hands, tired out with this useless pressure on that muscular flesh,
relaxed their grasp with a sort of dejection. The outbreak lasted for
some time, but tears came and she lay exhausted, inert, without any
other signs of life than the heaving of her breast and a constant stream
of tears.

Renovales had jumped ou