idly to them all, thinking that those fearful
comrades, with hair like highwaymen but as innocent and peevish as
children, were very funny and interesting.

"Those were the days, Pepe! Youth, which we never appreciate till it has
gone!"

Walking straight ahead, without knowing where they were going, absorbed
in their conversation and their memories, they suddenly found themselves
at the Puerta del Sol. Night had fallen; the electric lights were
coming out; the shop windows threw patches of light on the sidewalks.

Cotoner looked at the clock on the Government Building.

"Aren't you going to the Alberca woman's house to-night?"

Renovales seemed to awaken. Yes, he must go; they expected him. But he
was not going. His friend looked at him with a shocked expression, as if
he considered it a serious error to scorn a dinner.

The painter seemed to lack the courage to spend the evening between
Concha and her husband. He thought of her with a sort of aversion; he
felt as if he might brutally repel her constant caresses and tell
everything to the husband in an outburst of frankness. It was a
disgrace, treachery--that life _a trois_ which the society woman
accepted as the happiest of states.

"It's intolerable," he said to dissipate his friend's surprise. "I can't
stand her. She's a regular barnacle, and won't let me go for a minute."

He had never spoken to Cotoner of his affair with the Alberca woman, but
he did not have to tell him anything, he assumed that he knew.

"But she's pretty, Mariano," said he. "A wonderful woman! You know I
admire her. You might use her for your Greek picture."

The master cast at him a glance of pity for his ignorance. He felt a
desire to scoff at her, to injure her, thus justifying his indifference.

"Nothing but a facade. A face and a figure."

And bending over toward his friend he whispered to him seriously as if
he were revealing the secret of a terrible crime.

"She's knock-kneed. A regular swindle."

A satyr-like smile spread over Cotoner's lips and his ears wriggled. It
was the joy of a chaste man; the satisfaction of knowing the secret
defects of a beauty who was out of his reach.

The master did not want to leave his friend. He needed him, he looked
at him with tender sympathy, seeing in him something of his dead wife.
When she was sad, he had been her confidant. When her nerves were on
edge, this simple man's words ended the crisis in a flood of tears. With
whom could he