, her
perfume, her clothes, her beauty, pale as a dying flower. But no, it was
not she! Those eyes! In vain did they look at him differently, alarmed
at this sudden reaction; in vain they softened with a tender light,
trained by habit. The deceit was useless; he saw beyond, he penetrated
through those bright windows into the depths; he found only emptiness.
The other's soul was not there. That maddening perfume no longer moved
him; it was a false essence. He had before him merely a reproduction of
the beloved vase, but the incense, the soul, lost forever.

Renovales, standing up, drew away from her, looking at that woman with
terror in his eyes, and finally threw himself on a couch, with his face
in his hands.

The girl, hearing him sob, was afraid and ran toward the models' room to
take off those clothes, to flee. The man must be mad.

The master was weeping. Farewell, youth! Farewell desire! Farewell
dreams; enchanting sirens of life, that have fled forever. Useless the
search, useless the struggle in the solitude of life. Death had him in
his grasp, he was his and only through him could he renew his youth.
These images were useless. He could not find another to call up the
memory of the dead like this hired woman whom he had held in his
arms--and still, it was not she!

At the supreme moment, on the verge of reality, that indefinable
something had vanished, that something which had been enclosed in the
body of his Josephina, of his _maja_, whom he had worshiped in the
nights of his youth.

Immense, irreparable disappointment flooded his body with the icy calm
of old age.

Fall, ye towers of illusion! Sink, ye castles of fancy, built with the
longing to make the way fair, to hide the horizon! The path still
remained unbroken, barren and deserted. In vain would he sit by the
roadside, putting off the hour of his departure, in vain would he bow
his head that he might not see. The longer his rest, the longer his
fearful torment. At every hour he was destined to gaze at the dreaded
end of the last journey--unclouded, undisturbed--the dwelling from which
there is no return--the black, greedy abyss--death!

FOOTNOTE:

[A] The life of this character is the theme of _La Horda_, by
the same author.

End of Project Gutenberg's Woman Triumphant, by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN TRIUMPHANT ***

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