afterward, with sudden decision, he pretended that he wanted to write a
prescription, in order that he might talk with the husband alone in his
working studio.

"To tell you the truth, Renovales, this pitiful comedy is getting
tiresome. It may be all right for the others but you are a man. It is
acute consumption; perhaps a matter of days, perhaps a matter of a few
months; but she is dying and I know no remedy. If you want to, get some
one else."

"She is dying!" Renovales was dazed with surprise as if the possibility
of this outcome had never occurred to him. "She is dying!" And when the
doctor had gone away, with a firmer step than usual, as if he had freed
himself of a weight, the painter repeated the words to himself, without
their producing any other effect than leaving him abstracted in
senseless stupidity. She is dying! But was it really possible that that
little woman could die, who had so weighed on his life and whose
weakness filled him with fear?

Suddenly he found himself walking up and down the studio, repeating
aloud,

"She is dying! She is dying!"

He said it to himself in order that he might make himself feel sorry,
and break out into sobs of grief, but he remained mute.

Josephina was going to die--and he was calm. He wanted to weep; it
seemed to him a duty. He blinked, swelling out his chest, holding his
breath, trying to take in the whole meaning of his sorrow; but his eyes
remained dry; his lungs breathed the air with pleasure; his thoughts,
hard and refractory, did not shudder with any painful image. It was an
exterior grief that found expression only in words, gestures and excited
walking, his interior continued its old stolidness, as if the certainty
of that death had congealed it in peaceful indifference.

The shame of his villainy tormented him. The same instinct that forces
ascetics to submit themselves to mortal punishments for their imaginary
sins dragged him with the power of remorse to the sick chamber. He would
not leave the room; he would face her scornful silence; he would stay
with her till the end, forgetting sleep and hunger. He felt that he must
purify himself by some noble, generous sacrifice from this blindness of
soul that now was terrifying.

Milita no longer spent the nights caring for her mother and would go
home, somewhat to the discomfiture of her husband, who had been rather
pleased at this unexpected return to a bachelor's life.

Renovales did not sleep. After m