home a load of paintings, all the pictures, rough sketches,
water-colors and panels which represented her from the time she used to
play with the cat, dressing him in baby clothes, until she was a proud
young lady, courted by Soldevilla and the man who was now her husband.

The mother had remained there, rising after death about the artist in
oppressive profusion. All the little incidents in life had given
Renovales an occasion to paint new pictures. He recalled his enthusiasm
every time he saw her in a new dress. The colors changed her; she was a
new woman, so he would declare with a vehemence which his wife took for
admiration and which was merely the desire for a model.

Josephina's whole life had been fixed by her husband's hand. In one
canvas she appeared dressed in white, walking through a meadow with the
poetic dreaminess of an Ophelia; in another, wearing a large, plumed hat
covered with jewels, she showed the self-satisfaction of a
manufacturer's wife, secure in her well-being; a black curtain served as
a background for her bare neck and shoulders. In another picture she had
her sleeves rolled up; a white apron covered her from her breast to her
feet, on her forehead was a little wrinkle of care and weariness, and in
her whole mien the carelessness of one who has no time to attend to the
adornment of her person. This last was the portrait of the bitter days,
the image of the courageous housekeeper, without servants, working with
her delicate hands in a wretched attic, striving that the artist might
lack nothing, that the petty annoyances of life might not come to
distract him from his supreme efforts for success.

This portrait filled the artist with the melancholy which the memory of
bitter days inspires in the midst of comfort. His gratitude toward his
brave companion brought with it once more remorse.

"Oh, Josephina! Josephina!"

When Cotoner arrived, he found the master lying face down on the couch
with his head in his hands, as if he were asleep. He tried to interest
him by talking about the function of the day before. A great success;
the papers spoke of him and his speech, declaring that he was a great
writer and could win as marked a success in literature as in art. Had he
not read them?

Renovales answered with a bored expression. He had found them, when he
went out in the morning, on a table in the reception-room. He had cast a
glance at his picture surrounded by the solid columns of his speech