And without turning his head, reaching his arm through the half open
door he pointed out blindly what he had left. There was a pink dress, a
hat, shoes, stockings, a shirt.

Pepita protested when she saw these cast-off garments, showing an
aversion to putting on those underclothes which seemed worn and old.

"The shirt, too? The stockings? No, the dress is enough."

But the master begged her impatiently. She must put them all on; his
painting demanded it. The long silence of the girl proved that she was
complying, putting on these old garments, overcoming her repugnance.

When she came out of the room she smiled with a sort of pity, as if she
were laughing at herself. Renovales drew back, stirred by his own work,
bewildered, feeling his temples throbbing, fancying that the pictures
and furniture were whirling about him.

Poor "Fregolina"! What a delightful clown! She felt like laughing at the
thought of the storm of cries which would burst out in her theater if
she should appear on the stage dressed in this fashion, of the jests of
her friends if she should come into one of their dinners in these
clothes of twenty years ago. She did not know these styles, and to her
they seemed to belong to a remote antiquity. The master leaned over the
back of a chair.

"Josephina! Josephina!"

It was she, such as he kept her in his memory--as she was that happy
summer in the Roman mountains, in her pink dress and that rustic hat
which gave her the dainty air of a village girl in the opera. Those
fashions at which the younger generation laughed were for him the most
beautiful, the most artistic that feminine taste had ever produced; they
recalled the spring of his life.

"Josephina! Josephina!"

He remained silent, for these exclamations were born and died in his
thoughts. He did not dare to move or speak, for fear this apparition of
his dreams would vanish. She, smiling, was delighted at the effect her
appearance had on the painter and seeing her reflection in a distant
mirror, recognized that in this strange costume she did not look at all
badly.

"Where shall I go? Sitting or standing?"

The master could hardly speak; his voice was hoarse, labored.

She could pose as she wished. And she sat down in a chair adopting a
posture which she considered very graceful--her cheek on one hand, her
legs crossed, just as she was wont to sit in the green room of the
theater, showing a bit of open-work pink silk stocking under her s