“Oh! as to that....” Leon murmured.
“You will not?”
“No.—You ask too much at once. I am making an enormous sacrifice, while yours is but a small one. You are giving up superfluous luxuries to enjoy all that is necessary and reasonable; you are snatching off the mask of hypocrisy and bigotry to reveal the true beauty of a Christian wife. This is not a sacrifice. Mine on the other hand is the loss of everything;—in laying my studies and my friendships at your feet, I am cutting off half of my life that you may trample it in the dust.”
“But still it is not enough,” said María passionately. “Of what use is it that you should cease to read if you continue to think—if you still think and always will think the same? You will go with me to church as a mere formality; your body will go in, but your soul will remain outside; and when you see the sacred Host raised in the hands of the priest, a feeling of abominable mockery will laugh within you—unless indeed you are meditating on the insects you can see with your microscope, and which you believe to be the cause of thought and sentiment in our souls, and which I believe to be divine.”
“Your sarcasms cannot touch me,” said her husband. “I know too well the source of these ignorant prejudices. I can only pledge myself to honest and reverent attention.—But I was forgetting another matter. You will have to quit Madrid; we must go to live elsewhere. Now take your choice.”
“You ask too much—it is a shame!” cried María in the voice of a spoilt child. “And what do you offer in return? A sham of religion, a mask of belief to cover your infidel’s face! No, Leon; I cannot agree.”
“Then there is no hope for me,” cried Leon burying his head in his hands. After a few minutes of silent anguish, he coldly looked up at his wife and went on:
“María, then we must live apart. I cannot endure this existence. Within a few days it shall be settled. You can remain in this house or go to your parents, which ever you prefer; I shall go abroad, never to return—never.”
He rose; his wife, after the manner of fashionable wives, burst into tears, seizing his hands and pressing them to her breast.