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Updated: July 16, 2025
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. "There isn't any opera to-night."
He was very fond of the family; Milita played with him as if he were an old dog, Josephina felt a sort of affection for him, because his presence reminded her of the good old days in Rome. But Cotoner, in spite of this, seemed to be somewhat reluctant, divining the storms that darkened the master's life. He preferred his free existence, to which he adapted himself with the ease of a parasite.
At other times he looked all over the house for her in vain, questioning Milita who, accustomed to her mother's outbreaks and made selfish by her girlish strength, paid little attention to her and kept on playing with her dolls. "I don't know, papa; she's probably crying up stairs," she would answer naively.
López de Sosa was all right. An excellent boy! Or anyone else. He did not have time to give to such matters. Other things occupied his attention. He accepted his future son-in-law, and for several evenings he stayed at home to lend a sort of patriarchal air to the family parties. Milita and her betrothed talked at one end of the drawing-room.
Renovales saw him enter the studio, in a blue suit with a shining visor over his eyes, affecting the resolute bearing of a sailor or an explorer. "Good afternoon, Don Mariano, I have come for the ladies." And Milita came down stairs in a long gray coat, with a white cap, around which she wound a long blue veil.
I'll send you all you need to-morrow. I haven't much at the house. I shall have to get it at the bank operations you don't understand." But Milita, encouraged by her victory, insisted on her request with desperate obstinacy. He was deceiving her; he would not remember it the next day; she knew her father. "This very minute, papa. Don't be horrid. Don't amuse yourself by making me worry.
But he thought of her years of sacrifice, of the privations she had suffered, following him in the struggle with misery, without a complaint, without a protest, in the pains of motherhood, in the nursing of her daughter, that Milita who seemed to have stolen all the strength of her body and perhaps was the cause of her decline. How terrible to wish for her death! He hoped that she would live.
The desire of shocking the Academicians, who had accepted him before because he had renounced his ideals, tempted him. They went back to Madrid with little Milita, as they called her for short, abbreviating the diminutive of Emilia.
The master tried to explain, almost blushing, afraid to tell his intention to his daughter, suddenly overcome by paternal modesty. He was not sure as yet what he would do; he had to decide on a dress to suit her. And in a sudden access of tenderness, his eyes grew moist and he kissed his daughter. "Do you remember her well, Milita? She was very good, wasn't she?"
He had to paint; he must go out that afternoon as usual on important business. "Very well, go ahead. Milita is going to be married. And to whom?" Led by his desire to maintain his authority, to take the lead, and because of his long-standing affection for his pupil, he hastened to speak of him. Was Soldevilla the suitor? A good boy with a future ahead of him.
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