auty, that paid no attention to her, who was aged
before her time, sickly, with the ugliness of physical misery, whom each
one of these enthusiastic homages wounded like a reproach, marking the
abyss between her sad condition and the ideal that filled the mind of
her husband.

"Do you think I don't know what you are thinking about. I laugh at your
fidelity. A lie! Hypocrisy! As you get older, a mad desire is mastering
you. If you could, if you had the courage, you would run after these
creatures of beautiful flesh that you praise so highly. You are
commonplace. There's nothing in you but coarseness and materialism.
Form! Flesh! And they call that artistic? I'd have done better to marry
a shoemaker, one of those honest, simple men that takes his poor little
wife to dinner in a restaurant on Sunday and worships her, not knowing
any other."

Renovales began to feel irritated at this attack that was no longer
based on his actions but on his thoughts. That was worse than the
Inquisition. She had spied on him constantly; always on the watch, she
picked up his least words and expressions, she penetrated his thoughts,
making his inclinations and enthusiasms a subject for jealousy.

"Stop, Josephina. That's despicable. I won't be able to think, to
produce. You spy on me and pursue me even in my art."

She shrugged her shoulders scornfully. His art! She scoffed at it.

And she began again to insult painting, repenting that she had joined
her lot to an artist's. Men like him ought not to marry respectable
women, what people call "homebodies." Their fate was to remain single or
to join with unscrupulous women who were in love with their own form and
were capable of exhibiting it in the street, taking pride in their
nakedness.

"I used to love you; did you know it?" she said coldly. "I used to love
you, but I no longer love you. What's the use? I know that even if you
swore to me on your knees, you would never be faithful to me. You might
be tied to my apron strings but your thoughts would go wandering off to
caress those beauties you worship. You've got a perfect harem in your
head. I think I am living alone with you and when I look at you, the
house is peopled with women that surround me, that fill everything and
mock at me; all fair, like children of the devil all naked, like
temptations. Let me alone, Mariano, don't come near me. I don't want to
see you. Put out the light."

And seeing that the artist did not obey her co