ho had been raised to
their station, out of remembrance for the past. Her mother was annoyed
at her timidity. She ought to dance a lot, be lively and bold, like the
other girls, crack jokes, even if they were doubtful, that the men might
repeat them and give her the reputation of being a wit. It was
incredible that with the bringing up she had had, she should be so
insignificant. The idea! The daughter of a great man about whom people
used to crowd as soon as he entered the first salons in Europe! A girl
who had been educated at the school of the Sacred Heart in Paris, who
spoke English, a little German, and spent the day reading when she did
not have to clean a pair of gloves or make over a dress! Didn't she want
to get married? Was she so well satisfied with that fourth-story
apartment, that wretched cell so unworthy of their name?

Josephina smiled sadly. Get married! She never would get to that in the
society they frequented. Everyone knew they were poor. The young men
thronged the drawing-rooms in search of women with money. If by chance
one of them did come up to her, attracted by her pale beauty, it was
only to whisper to her shameful suggestions while they danced; to
propose uncompromising engagements, friendly relations with a prudence
modeled on the English, flirtations that had no result.

Renovales did not realize how his friendship with Josephina began.
Perhaps it was the contrast between himself and the little woman who
hardly came up to his shoulder and who seemed about fifteen when she was
already past twenty. Her soft voice with its slight lisp came to his
ears like a caress. He laughed when he thought of the possibility of
embracing that graceful, slender form; it would break in pieces in his
pugilist's hands, like a wax doll. Mariano sought her out in the
drawing-rooms which she and her mother were accustomed to frequent, and
spent all the time sitting at her side, feeling an impulse to confide in
her as a brother, a desire of telling her all about herself, his past,
his present work, his hopes, as if she were a room-mate. She listened to
him, looking at him with her brown eyes that seemed to smile at him,
nodding assent, often without having heard what he said, receiving like
a caress the exuberance of that nature which seemed to overflow in
waves of fire. He was different from all the men she had known.

When someone--nobody knows who--perhaps one of Josephina's friends,
noticed this intimacy, to