María spoke with such emphasis, and broke off with such a sparkle of scorn in her eyes with their dazzling, cat-like gleam, that Leon felt a chill about his aching heart like the stab of cold steel.
“Nothing that is mine!” he murmured, and his gaze fell on the ground as though death were his only hope.
“Nothing that proceeds from your haughty and erring intellect,” said his wife, giving what she thought was a decisive thrust. “Nothing that can contaminate me with your diabolical philosophy.”
There was a pause, and then Leon, with a prolonged sigh, looked up at her, pale and anxious.
“And who has taught you to say all this?” he asked.
“That matters not,” replied María, also turning pale but without losing courage. “I have told you already that, as a devout Catholic, I do not feel bound to render an account to an atheist of all the secrets of my religious conscience or of what regards my devotional practice. You need only be certain that I am faithful to you, and that I have never been false to my marriage vows in act, intention or thought. That is enough—I fulfil my pledge and duty as a wife and this is all the confidence you need look for from me. As for that part of my conscience which concerns God alone, do not hope to read it—it is a sanctuary into which you have no right to enter. Do not ask me: ‘Who taught me to say this or that’—You have no right to an answer.”
“I do not require it,” he said. “I never took it into my head to be uneasy because my wife went to the confessional three or four times a year to make a clean breast of her shortcomings and crave absolution in accordance with her creed. At the same time the confessional has its abuses: it asserts its rights to spiritual control by devious and underhand means, by daily interference, by constant and secret discussion of details, fostered on one hand by the scruples of an innocent soul, and on the other by the prurient curiosity of a man who has no natural family ties.”
“Indeed!” said María sarcastically. “It would be better, no doubt, that I should seek rules of conscience from the spiritual direction of your atheistical friends! I am sickened as it is, by the flippancy with which some of them speak of sacred subjects. I have told you, before now, that the parties in our house were an ostentatious and scandalous parade of evil principles and the day will come when I shall resolutely refuse to countenance them. I do not deny, of course, that some of your visitors are highly respectable; but others are not—I know what opinions some of them hold.”
“And who has informed you?” asked Leon eagerly.