t
lived in vain so many years together--at first united by love and
afterward by habit. For half a lifetime, their bodies had slept in close
contact, exchanging through their open pores that warmth which is like
the breath of the soul. She had taken away a part of the artist's life.
In her remains, crumbling in the lonely cemetery, there was a part of
the master and he, in turn, felt something strange and mysterious which
chained him to her memory, which made him always long for that body--the
complement of his own--which had already vanished in the void.

Renovales shut himself up in the house, with a taciturn air and a gloomy
expression which terrified his valet. If Senor Cotoner came, he was to
tell him that the master had gone out. If letters came from the
countess, he could leave them in an old terra-cotta jar in the anteroom,
where the neglected calling cards were piling up. If it was she who
came, he was to close the door. He did not want anything to distract
him. Dinner should be served in the studio.

And he worked alone, without a model, with a tenacity which kept him
standing before the canvas until it was dark. Sometimes, when the
servant entered at nightfall, he found the luncheon untouched on the
table. In the evening the master ate in silence in the dining-room, from
sheer animal necessity, not seeing what he was eating, his eyes gazing
into space.

Cotoner, somewhat piqued at this unusual regime which prevented him from
entering the studio, would call in the evening and try in vain to
interest him with news of the world outside. He observed in the master's
eyes a strange light, a gleam of insanity.

"How goes the work?"

Renovales answered vaguely. He could see it soon--in a few days.

His expression of indifference was repeated when he heard the Countess
of Alberca mentioned. Cotoner described her alarm and astonishment at
the master's behavior. She had sent for him to find out about Mariano,
to complain, with tears in her eyes, of his absence. She had twice been
to the door of his house and had not been able to get in; she
complained of the servant and that mysterious work. At least he ought to
write to her, answer her letters, full of tender laments, which she did
not suspect were lying unopened and neglected in a pile of yellow cards.
The artist listened to this with a shrug of the shoulders as if he was
hearing about the sorrows of a distant planet.

"Let's go and see Milita," he said. "Ther