“You,” retorted Leon “you who have so much cultivated the spiritual life must surely know that beauty of face and person is not what can best captivate the soul!”
“And to you my nature is hideous?” And she struck her forehead with a wild groan, as though she had suddenly remembered some vital fact or had come to her right mind after an interval of mental delusion. “How should it be otherwise when I am a Christian and you a reprobate atheist? Of course, of course ... and I have been so mad—mad do I say?—So wicked, as to take my eyes for a moment away from my Lord and Saviour to gaze on you—an infidel. I have put off my black serge to dress myself in this frippery, fit only for a lost woman, with the base purpose of pleasing—of courting you. My God! canst Thou ever forgive me?”
She snatched off her hat in delirious rage, and tearing it to fragments strewed them about the floor. In her haste she pulled down her hair which she had not fastened securely; the black locks fell about her temples and over her shoulders. She looked like a mad creature as she went close up to her husband and said to him in a low voice:
“I am as bad as you. I am an unworthy wretch. I forgot my God, my duty, and my dignity for your sake.... Wretch! I do not deserve to be called a saint, for a saint....” She glanced at her handsome dress with horror. “Women who devote themselves truly to God would not have put on this livery of sin. I am ashamed to see myself so tricked out. Away with you, for filthy rags!”
She tore the trimmings with unnatural strength, rending the stuff and ripping off the buttons, and at length she threw off her cloak and gloves and flung them into a corner.
“Enough, enough; I have stooped too low. I will return to God—to my seclusion and indifference to this world. I will curse my beauty for having pleased you. I will return to the peaceful practice of religion. No worldly humiliations can touch me then; I will find rest in sacred meditations, conversing with God and seeing the angels, and hearing the music of their songs in Heaven; I will go back to my peaceful life where, at any rate, I may be so happy as to forget you! In its gloom you will not come to curse my sight.... I have sinned and am unworthy of the least of the Lord’s mercies. Forgive, O Lord! Forgive! Never again will I sin thus.”
She fell on her knees and melted into tears that flowed in a ready torrent, while she covered her face with her trembling hands. They trickled through her fingers, and down on to her bosom, where she had torn her dress open. Leon was alarmed; the pathetic, helpless attitude and bitter fit of weeping touched him deeply. He bent over her and raising her in his arms placed her in a seat.
“María for God’s sake do not go mad,” he said. “Compose yourself—control yourself.” But she kept her hands clasped over her face.
Leon laid his hand on her shoulder, tried to rearrange her disordered hair and pull her dress round her—for she had really half-undressed herself in her fury. Suddenly she threw her arm round his neck with a convulsive energy and he felt her burning lips close to his cheek, but she did not kiss him; in a husky faint voice she said:
“I will strangle you—I will murder you if you love any one else.—Am I not handsomer, am I not more beautiful than she is?... Mine! you are mine.... Mine only....” But her grasp relaxed and her arms fell helplessly by her side; her head drooped on her breast, her hair veiling her face; a spasmodic quiver passed over her throat and neck—a shiver of the skin; he heard a faint murmur from her lips: “Dying—sinful....” And she sat in a heap speechless and unconscious. He felt her heart—her pulse; there was no perceptible flutter.