"You little hypocrite! It makes you squeamish!"
Filomena shrugged her shoulders, and began to run over the books in his library, naming them aloud:—
"Works of Molière ... Descartes; Discourse concerning Method.... Method of what?... Gil Blas de Santillana! Ouf! how dull that book is! I could not get half through it. Haven't you any of Octave Fueillet's novels? No? Then you show very poor taste.... Plato: Dialogues. Goethe: Faust. I should like to take this book, Miguel, because I only know the opera, and I am very much interested in the argument.... Stuart Mill: Logic.... Saint Thomas: Theodicea. Lope de Vega: Comédias.... Balzac: Physiology of Marriage.... I have read that book; it has some very delicate and true observations.... Haven't you read it, Maximina?"
Maximina was dumfounded.
"That is one of the books that Miguel has forbidden me to read."
Filomena fixed her eyes on him, and smiled in a peculiar way, as though to say, "I understand you."
Then suddenly, with the vivacity and ease which marked all her movements, she left the bookcase, opened the parlor door, and went in. Maximina and Miguel followed her. She sat down at the piano and began to give a powerful rendering of a polka. Before she had played it through she jumped up, and went to the entredós, where there were two great pots of flowers, and buried her face in them again and again, breathing in the fragrance with ecstacy.
"Oh, what lovely flowers! Did you buy them?"
"No; my sister-in-law Julia sent them to me."
"I am going to give you a slip," said Miguel.