Besides, she thought the position of a woman alone in the world horrible, she said,—at hotels hampered by luggage.
“You are right,” returned Leopoldina. “I should like to smoke a cigarette,” she added abruptly.
“Yes; but Juliana might perceive the smell of the smoke, which would have a very unpleasant effect upon her.”
“This is a convent, my dear,” replied Leopoldina. “Your prison is not an ugly one,” she added.
Luiza did not answer. She leaned her head on her hand, her gaze fixed on vacancy, like one absorbed in thought.
“All this is folly,” she said. “The sole reality in this world is to be happy in one’s house with one’s husband and children.”
Leopoldina gave a jump in her chair. “Children!” she exclaimed. She did not want even to speak of them. She thanked God every day of her life for not giving them to her.
“Horrible!” she exclaimed in accents of conviction. “They are a burden,—expense, trouble, sickness. Heaven deliver me from them! When they grow up they stick their noses into every corner; they tell tales. A woman with children is good for nothing; tied hand and foot; without any pleasure in life. Not to speak of how it disfigures a woman,” she continued; “there is no beauty of figure that can resist that. One loses one’s chief attraction. If one were like your friend Donna Felicidade, it would not matter; but when one is tall and well-formed, it is different.”
She rose, displaying her figure airily, in a graceful attitude.
“Thanks,” she said, sitting down again. “We have troubles enough without that one in addition.”