ters were always alike; endless complaints at his short absences.
"_Cher maitre_, I could not sleep last night, thinking of you," and she
ended with "Your admirer and good friend, Coquillerosse," a _nom de
guerre_ she had adopted for her correspondence with the artist.

She wrote in a disordered style, at unusual hours, just as her fancy
and her abnormal nervous system prompted. Sometimes she dated her letter
at three in the morning, she could not sleep, got out of bed and to pass
the sleepless hours filled four sheets of paper (with the facility of
despair) in her fine hand, addressed to her good friend, talking to him
of the count, of what her acquaintances said, telling him the latest
gossip about the Court, lamenting the doctor's coldness. At other times,
there were only four brief, desperate lines. "Come at once, dear
Mariano. A very urgent matter."

And the master, leaving his tasks early in the morning, ran to the
countess' house, where she received him still in bed in her fragrant
chamber which the gentleman with honorary crosses had not entered for
many years.

The painter came in in great anxiety, disturbed at the possibility of
some terrible event, and Concha, tossing about between the embroidered
sheets, tucking in the golden wisps of hair that escaped from her lace
cap, talked and talked, as incoherently as a bird sings, as if the
silence of the night had hopelessly confused her ideas. A great idea had
occurred to her; during her sleep she had thought out an absolutely
original scientific theory that would delight Monteverde. And she
explained it earnestly to the master, who nodded his approval without
understanding a word, thinking it was a pity to see such an attractive
mouth uttering such follies.

At other times she would talk to him about the speech she was preparing
for a fair of the Woman's Association, the _magnum opus_ of her
presidency; and drawing her ivory arms from under the sheet with a
calmness that dazed Renovales, she would pick up from the nearby table
some sheets of paper scribbled with pencil, and ask her friend to tell
her who was the greatest painter in the world, for she had left a blank
to fill in with this name.

After an hour of incessant chatter while the artist watched her silently
with greedy eyes, he finally came to the urgent matter, the desperate
summons that had made the master leave his work. It was always an affair
of life or death, compromises in which her honor was