“But remember,” he said to her, with southern logic, “you do not love, save with your will. I don’t like the love you have for your god: it is an assertion of your own will. I don’t like the love you have for me: it is the same. I don’t like the love you have for your children. If ever I see in them a spark of desire to be saved from it, I shall do my best to save them. Meanwhile have your love, have your will. But you know I dislike it. I dislike your insistence. I dislike your monopoly of one feeling, I dislike your charity works. I disapprove of the whole trend of your life. You are weakening and vitiating the boys. You do not love them, you are only putting your love-will over them. One day they will turn and hate you for it. Remember I have said this to you.”
Doña Carlota had trembled in every fibre of her body, under the shock of this. But she went away to the chapel of the Annunciation Convent, and prayed. And, praying for his soul, she seemed to gain a victory over him, in the odour of sanctity. She came home in frail, pure triumph, like a flower that blooms on a grave: his grave.
And Ramón henceforth watched her in her beautiful, rather fluttering, rather irritating gentleness, as he watched his closest enemy.
Life had done its work on one more human being, quenched the spontaneous life and left only the will. Killed the god in the woman, or the goddess, and left only charity, with a will.
“Carlota,” he had said to her, “how happy you would be if you could wear deep, deep mourning for me.—I shall not give you this happiness.”
She gave him a strange look from her hazel-brown eyes.
“Even that is in the hands of God,” she had replied, as she hurried away from him.
And now, on this morning after the first rains, she came to the door of his room as he was sitting writing. As yesterday, he was naked to the waist, the blue-marked sash tied round his middle confined the white linen, loose trousers—like big, wide pyjama trousers crossed in front and tied round his waist.
“May I come in?” she said nervously.
“Do!” he replied, putting down his pen and rising.