ost."

The invalid was silent, exhausted by such an effort; she relapsed into
that lethargy which for her took the place of rest. Renovales, after
this conversation, felt his vile inferiority beside his wife. She knew
everything and forgave him. She had followed the course of his love,
letter by letter, look by look, seeing in his smiles the memory of his
faithlessness. And she was silent! She was dying without a protest! And
he did not fall at her feet to beg her forgiveness! And he remained
unmoved, without a tear, without a sigh!

He was afraid to stay alone with her. Milita came back to stay at the
house to care for her mother. The master took refuge in his studio; he
wanted to forget in work the body that was dying under the same roof.

But in vain he poured colors on his palette and took up brushes and
prepared canvases. He did nothing but daub; he could make no progress,
as if he had forgotten his art. He kept turning his head anxiously,
thinking that Josephina was going to enter suddenly, to continue that
interview in which she had laid bare the greatness of her soul and the
baseness of his own. He felt forced to return to her apartments, to go
on tiptoe to the door of the chamber, in order to be sure that she was
there.

Her emaciation was frightful; it had no limits. When it seemed that it
must stop, it still surprised them with new shrinking, as if after the
disappearance of her flesh, her poor skeleton was melting away.

Sometimes she was tormented with delirium, and her daughter, holding
back her tears, approved of the extravagant trips she planned, of her
proposals to go far away to live with Milita in a garden, where they
would find no men; where there were no painters--no painters.

She lived about two weeks. Renovales, with cruel selfishness, was
anxious to rest, complaining of this abnormal existence. If she must
die, why did she not end it as soon as possible, and restore the whole
house to tranquillity!

The end came one afternoon when the master, lying on a couch in his
studio, was re-reading the tender complaints of a scented little letter.
So long since she had seen him! How was the patient getting on? She knew
that his duty was there; people would talk if he came to see her. But
this separation was hard!

He did not have a chance to finish it. Milita came into the studio, in
her eyes that expression of horror and fright, which the presence of
death, the touch of his passage, always inspi