face, to the pure air. He came
upon card-board boxes, bundles of belts and old lace, without finding
what he was seeking. And every time that his trembling arms shook the
old clothes, the swinging of the skirts seemed to throw in his face a
wave of that dead, indefinable perfume which he breathed more with his
fancy than with his senses.

He wanted to get out as soon as possible. The insignia were not in the
wardrobe. Perhaps he would find them in the chamber. And for the first
time since the death of his wife, he ventured to turn the door key. The
perfume of the past seemed to go with him; it had penetrated through all
the pores of his body. He fancied he felt the pressure of a pair of
distant, enormous arms, that came from the infinite. He was no longer
afraid to enter the chamber.

He groped his way, looking for one of the windows. When the shutters
creaked and the sunlight rushed in, the painter's eyes, after a moment
of blinking, saw, like a sweet, faint smile, the glow of the Venetian
furniture.

What a beautiful artistic chamber! After a year of absence, the painter
admired the great clothes-press with its three mirrors, deep and blue as
only the mirror-makers of Murano could make them and the ebony of the
furniture inlaid with tiny bits of pearl and bright jewels, a specimen
of the artistic genius of ancient Venice in contact with Oriental
peoples. This furniture had been for Renovales one of the great
undertakings of his youth; the whim of a lover, eager to bestow princely
honors on his companion after years of strict economy.

They had always had their luxurious bedroom wherever they were, even at
the time of their poverty. In those hard days when he painted in the
attic and Josephina did the cooking, they had no chairs, they ate from
the same plate; Milita played with rag-dolls; but in their miserable,
whitewashed alcove were piled up with sacred respect all that furniture
of the fair-haired wife of some Doge, like a hope for the future, a
promise of better times. She, poor woman, with her simple faith, cleaned
it, worshiped it, waiting for the hour of magic transformation to move
them to a palace.

The painter glanced about the chamber calmly. He found nothing unusual
there, nothing that moved him. Cotoner had prudently hidden the chair in
which Josephina died.

The princely bed, with its monumental head and foot of carved ebony and
brilliant mosaic, looked vulgar with the mattresses piled in a heap.