admiringly, delighting in reproducing her
face.

He threw the blame for his slowness on Milita and determined to have the
study taken away from there. His wife's portrait ought not be in the
hall, beside the hat-rack.

After luncheon he gave orders to the servant to take down the picture
and move it into one of the drawing-rooms. The servant looked surprised.

"There are so many portraits of the mistress. You have painted her so
many times, sir. The house is full."

Renovales mimicked the servant's expression. "So many! So many!" He knew
how many times he had painted her! With a sudden curiosity before going
to the studio, he entered the parlor where Josephina received her
callers. There, in the place of honor, he saw a large portrait of his
wife, painted in Rome, a dainty woman with a lace mantilla, a black
ruffled skirt and, in her hand, a tortoise-shell fan--a veritable Goya.
He gazed for a moment at that attractive face, shaded by the black lace,
its oriental eyes in sharp contrast to its aristocratic pallor. How
beautiful Josephina was in those days!

He opened the windows the better to see the portrait and the light fell
on the dark red walls making the frames of other smaller pictures flash.

Then the painter saw that the Goyesque picture was not the only one.
Other Josephinas accompanied him in the solitude. He gazed with
astonishment at the face of his wife, which seemed to rise from all
sides of the parlor. Little studies of women of the people or ladies of
the 18th century; water-colors of Moorish women; Greek women with the
stiff severity of Alma-Tadema's archaic figures; everything in the
parlor, everything he had painted, was Josephina, had her face, or
showed traces of her with the vagueness of a memory.

He passed to the adjoining parlor and there, too, his wife's face,
painted by him, came to meet him among other pictures by his friends.

When had he done all that? He could not remember; he was surprised at
the enormous quantity of work he had performed unconsciously. He seemed
to have spent his whole life painting Josephina.

Afterwards, in all the hallways, in all the rooms where pictures were
hung, his wife met his gaze, under the most varied aspects, frowning or
smiling, beautiful or sad with sickness. They were sketched, simple,
unfinished charcoal drawings of her head in the corner of a canvas, but
always that glance followed him, sometimes with an expression of
melancholy tenderness, s