, after a life of toil, happiness were the inevitable
forerunner of death.

The bride and groom started on their trip the same day. Senor Anton for
the first time kissed his daughter-in-law on the forehead, moistening it
with his tears, and went home to his village, still repeating his
longing for death, as though nothing were left in the world for him to
hope for.

Renovales and his wife reached Rome after several stops on the way.
Their short stay in various cities of the Riviera, the days in Pisa and
Florence, though delightful, as keeping the memory of their first
intimacy, seemed unspeakably vulgar, when they were installed in their
little house in Rome. There the real honeymoon began, by their own
fireside, free from all intrusion, far from the confusion of hotels.

Josephina, accustomed to a life of secret privation, to the misery of
that fourth-floor apartment in which she and her mother lived as though
they were camping out, keeping all their show for the street, admired
the coquettish charm, the smart daintiness of the house in the Via
Margutta. Mariano's friend, who had charge of the furnishing of the
house, a certain Pepe Cotoner, who hardly ever touched his brushes and
who devoted all his artistic enthusiasm to his worship of Renovales, had
certainly done things well.

Josephina clapped her hands in childish joy when she saw the bedroom,
admiring its sumptuous Venetian furniture, with its wonderful inlaid
pearl and ebony, a princely luxury that the painter would have to pay
for in instalments.

Oh! The first night of their stay in Rome! How well Renovales remembered
it! Josephina, lying on the monumental bed, made for the wife of a Doge,
shook with the delight of rest, stretching her limbs before she hid them
under the fine sheets, showing herself with the abandon of a woman who
no longer has any secrets to keep. The pink toes of her plump little
feet moved as if they were calling Renovales.

Standing beside the bed, he looked at her seriously, with his brows
contracted, dominated by a desire that he hesitated to express. He
wanted to see her, to admire her; he did not know her yet, after those
nights in the hotels when they could hear strange voices on the other
side of the thin walls.

It was not the caprice of a lover, it was the desire of a painter, the
demand of an artist. His eyes were hungry for beauty.

She resisted, blushing, a trifle angry at this demand which offended her
deepest prejud