t the thought that her husband was
the pretext of this break. Her husband! And once more she began to laugh
uproariously, revealing the count's insignificance, the absolute lack
of respect which he inspired in his wife, or her habit of adjusting her
life as her fancy dictated, with never a thought of what that man might
say or think. Her husband did not exist for her; she never feared him;
she had never thought that he might serve as an obstacle, and yet her
lover spoke of him, presented _him_ as a justification for leaving her!

"My husband!" she repeated amid the peals of her cruel laughter. "Poor
thing! Leave him in peace; he has nothing to do with us. Don't lie;
don't be a coward. Speak. You've something else on your mind. I don't
know what it is; but I have a presentiment, I see it from here. If you
loved another woman! If you loved another woman!"

But she broke off this threatening exclamation. She needed only to look
at him to be convinced that it was impossible. His body was not perfumed
with love; everything about him revealed calm peace, without interests
or desires. Perhaps it was a whim of his fancy, some unbalanced caprice
which led him to repel her. And encouraged by this belief, she relaxed,
forgetting her anger, speaking to him affectionately, caressing him with
a fervor in which there was something at once of the mother and of the
mistress.

Renovales suddenly saw her beside him with her arms around his neck,
burying her hands in his tangled hair.

She was not proud; men worshiped her, but her heart, her body, all of
her belonged to the master, the ungrateful brute, who returned so ill
her affection that she was getting old with her trouble.

Suddenly filled with tenderness, she kissed his forehead generously and
purely. Poor boy! He was working so hard! The only thing the matter was
that he was tired out, distracted with too much painting. He must leave
his brushes alone, live, love her, be happy, rest his wrinkled forehead
behind which, like a curtain, an invisible world passed and repassed in
perpetual revolution.

"Let me kiss your pretty forehead again, so that the hobgoblins within
may be silent and sleep."

And she kissed once more his _pretty_ forehead, delighting in caressing
with her lips the furrows and prominences of its irregular surface,
rough as volcanic ground.

For a long time her wheedling voice, with an exaggerated childish lisp,
sounded in the silence of the studio. She was