bout to your friends in the studio, those infamous hypocrisies
to justify your scorn for the family, for marriage, for everything. Have
the courage of your convictions."

But Renovales, overwhelmed by this fierce outpouring of words that fell
on him like a rain of blows, could only repeat, with his hand on his
heart and the expression of noble resignation of a man who suffers an
injustice:

"I am innocent. I swear it. Your suspicions are absolutely groundless."

And walking around to the other side of the bed, he tried again to take
Josephina in his arms, thinking he could calm her, now that she seemed
less furious and that her angry words were broken by tears.

It was a useless effort. The delicate form slipped out of his hands,
repelling them with a feeling of horror and repugnance.

"Let me alone. Don't touch me. I loathe you."

Her husband was mistaken if he thought that she was Concha's enemy.
Pshaw! She knew what women were. She even admitted (since he was so
insistent in his protestations of innocence) that there was nothing
between them. But if so, it was due solely to Concha--she had plenty of
admirers and, besides, her old time friendship would impel her not to
embitter Josephina's life. Concha was the one who had resisted and not
he.

"I know you. You know that I can guess your thoughts, that I read in
your face. You are faithful because you are a coward, because you have
lacked an opportunity. But your mind is loaded with foul ideas; I detest
your spirit."

And before he could protest, his wife attacked him; anew, pouring out in
one breath all the observations she had made, weighing his words and
deeds with the subtlety of a diseased imagination.

She threw in his face the expression of rapture in his eyes when he saw
beautiful women sit down before his easel to have their portraits
painted; his praise of the throat of one, the shoulders of another; the
almost religious unction with which he examined the photographs and
engravings of naked beauties, painted by other artists whom he would
like to imitate in his licentious impulses.

"If I should leave you! If I should disappear! Your studio would be a
brothel, no decent person could enter it; you would always have some
woman stripped in there, painting some disgraceful picture of her."

And in the tremble of her irritated voice there was revealed the anger,
the bitter disappointment she had experienced in the constant contact
with this cult of be