lves, like those great trees that absorb all the life from the
ground and do not allow a single plant to grow in the space which their
roots reach. She was not strong enough to stand isolation; in order to
live she must have the shadow of tenderness, the certainty of being
loved. She ought to have married a man like other men; a simple being
like herself, whose only longings were modest and commonplace. The
painter had dragged her into his extraordinary path out of the easy,
well-beaten roads that the rest follow and she was falling by the
wayside, old in the prime of her youth, broken because she had gone with
him in this journey which was beyond her strength.

Renovales was walking about with ceaseless protests.

"Why, what nonsense you are talking! You are raving! I have always loved
you, Josephina. I love you now."

Her eyes suddenly became hard. A flash of anger crossed their pupils.

"Stop; don't lie. I know of a pile of letters that you have in your
studio, hidden behind the books in your library. I have read them one by
one. I have been following them as they came; I discovered your hiding
place when you had only three of them. You know that I see through you;
that I have a power over you, that you can hide nothing from me. I know
your love affairs."

Renovales felt his ears buzzing, the floor slipping from under his feet.
What astounding witchcraft! Even the letters so carefully hidden had
been discovered by that woman's divining instinct!

"It's a lie!" he cried vehemently to conceal his agitation. "It isn't
love! If you have read them, you know what it is as well as I; just
friendship; the letters of a friend who is somewhat crazy."

The sick woman smiled sadly. At first it was friendship--even less than
that, the perverse amusement of a flighty woman who liked to play with a
celebrated man, exciting in him the enthusiasm of youth. She knew her
childhood companion; she was sure it would not go any farther; and so
she pitied the poor man in the midst of his mad love. But afterward
something extraordinary had certainly happened; something that she could
not explain and which had upset all of her calculations. Now her husband
and Concha were lovers.

"Do not deny it; it is useless. It is this certainty that is killing me.
I realized it when I saw you distracted, with a happy smile as if you
were relishing your thoughts. I realized it in the merry songs you sang
when you awoke in the morning, in the perfu