The man went away; but he noticed in Leon Roch an anxious and absent manner, indicating that he was absorbed by some ruling idea; still, a servant cannot offer to console his master or to persuade him out of his melancholy by demonstrations of affection, so he went.
Leon was alone, and flinging himself into a seat with his elbow on a little table and his chin resting on his hands, his eyes—eyes as black as night—half-closed, he sat thinking. Of what, God alone knows. So complete was his abstraction from external things that he did not hear the soft footfall of a dark form which entered noiselessly, more like a ghost than a woman, and came close up to him. It touched him on the shoulder, and as he turned to look up Leon gave a cry of alarm. The fact is that there are occasions and circumstances when our mind is in a state that makes the simplest events and the most familiar faces seem strange and terrible.
“You startled me,” he said.
“That is strange! so cool a man, so brave and sensible, to be frightened at me!” said María in the doleful, mechanical voice that she had adopted for the last few months. She was robed in a morning gown of a dull mouse-grey and of the most exaggerated simplicity of make; she was pale and looked sallow, but from want of care rather than from self-mortification; her neat feet were concealed in a pair of coarse felt slippers, and her figure revealed neither shape nor grace; her fine hair hid itself as if ashamed under the folds of a cap of hideous dimensions.
After looking at him for a minute or two María said in a hard voice: “well, are you afraid of me?”
“Yes, I am afraid of you,” he replied, taking his eyes off his wife and looking at the ground.
“What next!” said María, smiling with an expression of disdainful superiority. “Because I am so ugly? But, would you believe it, I am delighted to see you quail before me. It is the privilege of humility that it can abash the gaze of the proud.” And as she spoke she seated herself.
Then, either because she detected a look of disgust on her husband’s face, or because she fancied she did, she added: “it annoys you that I should disturb you? So I supposed. That is the very reason why I shall stay. My duty comes before everything: and my conscience requires me to ask you what you have been doing for so long. Leon, your conduct is far from right. You never were a Christian but you kept up appearances at any rate; now, you do not even do that.”
“You do everything in your power to make my home unendurable,” replied Leon coldly. “Your disgust at the presence of those friends whom I most care to see, added to your fancy for filling the house with people whom I dislike; your constant absence—for you too go out, and a great deal more than I do—spending whole days in church; the extraordinary change in your very nature from being loving and amiable to harshness and scolding, are additional motives for my remaining within doors as little as possible. The house is full of gall and bitterness which weighs upon my soul as soon as I enter it.”