master pushed him out of a door that led into the garden. Then, when
he was alone, he ran to an old Venetian mirror, and looked at himself
for a moment in its deep, bluish surface, smoothing his curly gray hair
with his fingers.

V

She came in with a great rustling of silks and laces, her least
step accompanied by the _frou-frou_ of her skirts, scattering various
perfumes, like the breath of an exotic garden.

"Good afternoon, _mon cher maitre_."

As she looked at him through her tortoise-shell lorgnette, hanging from
a gold chain, the gray amber of her eyes took on an insolent stare
through the glasses, a strange expression, half caressing, half mocking.

He must pardon her for being so late. She was sorry for her lack of
attention, but she was the busiest woman in Madrid. The things she had
done since luncheon! Signing and examining papers with the secretary of
the "Women's League," a conference with the carpenter and the foreman
(two rough fellows who fairly devoured her with their eyes), who had
charge of putting up the booths for the great fair for the benefit of
destitute working women; a call on the president of the Cabinet, a
somewhat dissolute old gentleman, in spite of his gravity, who received
her with the airs of an old-fashioned gallant, kissing her hand, as they
used to in a minuet.

"We have lost the afternoon, haven't we, _maitre?_ There's hardly sun
enough to work by now. Besides, I didn't bring my maid to help me."

She pointed with her lorgnette to the door of an alcove that served as a
dressing-room for the models and where she kept the evening gown and the
flame-colored cloak in which he was painting her.

Renovales, after looking furtively at the entrance of the studio,
assumed an arrogant air of swaggering gallantry, such as he used to have
in his youth in Rome, free and obstreperous.

"You needn't give up on that account. If you will let me, I'll act as
maid for you."

The countess began to laugh loudly, throwing back her head and
shoulders, showing her white throat that shook with merriment.

"Oh, what a good joke! And how daring the master is getting. You don't
know anything about such things, Renovales. All you can do is paint. You
are not in practice."

And in her accent of subtle irony, there was something like pity for the
artist, removed from mundane things, whose conjugal virtue everyone
knew. This seemed to offend him for he spoke to the countess very
sharply as