"Only in one point, as you well know. In all the rest I obey blindly."
The point was marriage. Maximina did not cease to urge him to get married.
"Hitherto I have never found a woman who would satisfy me for a wife," he replied.
"Why don't you marry Julia?" she asked one day at random, with the ingenuous frankness characteristic of her.
Don Alfonso was a trifle confused.
"Julia is a good girl.... Very well educated ... she is talented ... she is pretty.... But see here! confidentially, do you think that I should be happy with Julia?"
"Why not?" demanded the young wife.
Saavedra kept silent a few minutes, remaining apparently lost in thought; then he said:—
"You will readily understand that as you are her sister-in-law, and I am her cousin, neither of us can with delicacy speak about her except in terms of praise, which she certainly deserves in many regards. But with you I have the courage to say one thing, and that is that we are not congenial. We are two...."
And Don Alfonso put his two index fingers end to end.