e isn't any opera to-night."

In his retirement the only thing which connected him with the outside
world was his desire to see his daughter, to talk to her, as if he loved
her with new affection. She was his Josephina's flesh, she had lived in
her. She was healthy and strong, like him, nothing in her appearance
reminded him of the other, but her sex bound her closely with the
beloved image of her mother.

He listened to Milita with smiles of pleasure, grateful for the interest
she manifested in his health.

"Are you ill, papa? You look poorly. I don't like your appearance. You
are working too much."

But he calmed her, swinging his strong arms, swelling out his lusty
chest. He had never felt better. And with the minuteness of a
good-natured grandfather he inquired about all the little displeasures
of her life. Her husband spent the day with his friends. She grew tired
of staying at home and her only amusement was making calls or going
shopping. And after that came a complaint, always the same, which the
father divined at her first words. Lopez de Sosa was selfish, niggardly
toward her. His spendthrift habits never went beyond his own pleasures
and his own person; he economized in his wife's expenses. He loved her
in spite of that. Milita did not venture to deny it; no mistresses or
unfaithfulness. She would be likely to stand that! But he had no money
except for his horses and automobiles; she even suspected that he was
gambling, and his poor wife lived without a thing to her back, and had
to weep her requests every time she received a bill, little trifles of a
thousand pesetas or two.

The father was as generous to her as a lover. He felt like pouring at
her feet all that he had piled up in long years of labor. She must live
in happiness, since she loved her husband! Her worries made him smile
scornfully. Money! Josephina's daughter sad because she needed things,
when in his house there were so many dirty, insignificant papers which
he had worked so hard to win and which he now looked at with
indifference! He always went away from these visits amid hugs and a
shower of kisses from that big girl who expressed her joy by shaking him
disrespectfully, as if he were a child.

"Papa, dear, how good you are! How I love you!"

One night as he left his daughter's house with Cotoner, he said
mysteriously:

"Come in the morning, I will show it to you. It isn't finished but I
want you to see it. Just you. No one can jud