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Lies, gossip that people tell about me because I am not a hypocrite and am not always wearing a gloomy expression." And led on by that desire for sympathy that all women of questionable reputation experience, she spoke once more of her unpleasant situation. Renovales knew the count, a good man in spite of his hobbies, who thought of nothing but his honorary trinkets.
It was something more than friendship that made Renovales pass through Josephina's street mornings, looking at the high windows in the hope of seeing her dainty silhouette through the panes. One night at the duchess' when they were left alone in the hallway, Renovales caught her hand and lifted it to his lips, but so timidly that they scarcely touched her glove.
Her paleness grew intense, almost greenish, and she started forward with such a rush that the servant could not stop her and was left behind her, dejected, confused, fearful of his master's wrath. Renovales, alarmed by the sharp click of heels on the hard floor, and the rustling of skirts, turned toward the door just as the countess made her entrance with a dramatic expression. "It's me." "You?
Cotoner, in the full bliss of digestion, strove with his jests to bring a faint smile to the face of the master's wife, but she stayed in the corner, shivering with cold. Renovales, in a smoking jacket, read the papers, soothed by the charming atmosphere of his quiet home. If the countess could only see him! One night the Alberca woman's name was mentioned in the drawing-room.
And his wife, when she heard him talking about marriage, making conjectures on his future son-in-law, closed her eyes and said in a tense voice, that revealed her insuperable obstinacy: "She shall marry anyone she wants to, except a painter. I would rather see her dead than that." It was then Renovales divined his wife's true illness.
The mother had remained there, rising after death about the artist in oppressive profusion. All the little incidents in life had given Renovales an occasion to paint new pictures. He recalled his enthusiasm every time he saw her in a new dress.
To his mind, Renovales could produce nothing but masterpieces and in his blind admiration he even went so far as to rave naively over the easel pictures he painted for his impresario. Sometimes Josephina unexpectedly appeared in her husband's studio and chatted with him while he painted, praising the canvases that had a pretty subject.
Besides, the reception rooms of the present, like the rooms in a doll's house, were good merely for pretty pictures marked by stereotyped mannerisms. Scenes taken from nature were out of place in this background. The only way to make money then was to paint portraits and Renovales forgot his distinction as an innovator in order to win at any cost fame as a portrait painter of society people.
Renovales was irritated at her disposition, always restless and capricious as a bird's, quite as likely to sit down beside him in warm intimacy as to flit away with tormenting banter. Sometimes she was aggressive, teasing the artist from her very first words, as had just happened that afternoon.
You can't talk to them like a good friend, show them any confidence without their beginning to talk love on the spot. If I would let you, in less than a minute you would tell me that I am your ideal, that you worship me." Renovales, who had moved away from her, recovering his sternness, felt cut by that mocking laugh and said in a quiet tone: "And what if it were true? What if I loved you?"
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