corner, staring into space.

Cotoner shook his head again. Renovales' optimism was not to be wondered
at.

"You are leading a strange life, Mariano. Since I came back from my
trip, you are a different man; I wouldn't know you. Once, you could not
live without painting and now you spend weeks at a time without taking
up a brush. You smoke, sing, walk up and down the studio and all at once
rush off, out of the house and go--well. I know where, and perhaps your
wife suspects it. You seem to be having a good time, master. The deuce
take the rest! But, man alive, come down from the clouds. See what is
around you; have some charity."

And good Cotoner complained bitterly of the life the master was
leading--disturbed by sudden impatience and hasty departures, from which
he returned absent-minded, with a faint smile on his lips and a vague
look in his eyes, as if he still relished the feast of memories he
carried in his mind.

The old painter seemed alarmed at Josephina's increasing delicacy, acute
consumption that still found matter to destroy in her organism wasted by
years of illness. The poor little woman coughed constantly and this
cough, that was not dry but prolonged and violent, alarmed Cotoner.

"The doctors ought to see her again."

"The doctors!" exclaimed Renovales, "What's the use? A whole medical
faculty has been here and to no avail. She doesn't mind them; she
refuses everything, perhaps to annoy me, to oppose me. There's no
danger; you don't know her. Weak and small as she is, she will outlive
you and me."

His voice shook with wrath, as if he could not stand the atmosphere of
that house where the only distractions he found were the pleasant
memories that took him away from it.

Cotoner's insistence finally forced him to call a doctor who was a
friend of his.

Josephina was provoked, divining the cause of their anxiety. She felt
strong. It was nothing but a cold; the coming of winter. And in her
glances at the artist there was reproach and insult for his attention
which she regarded as hypocrisy.

When the doctor and the painter returned to the studio after the
examination of the patient and stood face to face, the former hesitated
as if he was afraid to formulate his ideas. He could not say anything
with certainty; it was easy to make a mistake in regard to that weak
system that maintained itself only by its extraordinary reserve power.
Then he had recourse to the usual evasive measure of his profe