“She is lovely!” Leon exclaimed, as he sat sunk in his arm-chair, gazing like a simpleton. “Lovelier every day!”
After making various little arrangements at the glass, María went into her alcove. Leon’s head sank between his hands, and he remained for a long time lost in thought. He was in a fever. At length he rose—angry with himself or with some one else. “I am a fool!” he said. “I wanted a Christian wife and not a hypocritical odalisque.”
CHAPTER XV.
A MODUS VIVENDI.
He sat in silence for some little time; suddenly María gave a loud and terrified cry; he flew to her alcove and found her sitting up in bed, her eyes fixed, her arms extended.
“Leon, oh Leon!” she gasped in alarm, “Are you there—oh, where are you? Ah! Yes—here you are—Hold me—What a hideous dream!”
Leon soon succeeded in soothing her by recalling her to waking reality, the best cure for such vagaries of the fancy.
“I was dreaming—I dreamed I had killed you, and that from the very bottom of a deep, black hole you looked up at me, with oh! such a face—And then you were alive again, but you loved some one else.—I will not have you love any one else....” and she flung her arms round her husband’s neck.