Cæsar wondered if he had acquired new nerves. His instinct to be arbitrary was on the downward track.
He could not easily determine what role his wife played in his inner life. He felt the necessity of having her beside him, of talking to her; but he did not understand whether this was mere selfishness, for the sake of the soothing effect her presence produced, or was for the satisfaction of his vanity in seeing how she gave all her thought to him.
Spiritually he did not feel her either identified with him or strange to him; her soul marched along as if parallel to his, but in other paths.
“All that men say about women is completely false,” Cæsar used to think, “and what women say about themselves, equally so, because they merely repeat what men say. Only when they are completely emancipated will they succeed in understanding themselves. It is indubitable that we have not the same leading ideas, or the same points of view. Probably we have not a similar moral sense either. Neither is woman made for man, nor man for woman. There is necessity between them, not harmony.”
Many times, watching Amparito, he told himself:
“There is some sort of machinery in her head that I do not understand.”
Noting his scrutinizing gaze, she would ask him:
“What are you thinking about me?”
He would explain his perplexities, and she would laugh.
SYMPATHY