EXTRACTS FROM SUPREMA LEY.
Julito no longer resisted and he also lay down to sleep; he would make his aunt’s acquaintance in the morning. Carmen, sitting by the spread table, solitary and silent, after the fatiguing day, could not sleep.
She was thinking——.
Through her thoughts passed vague fears of coming misfortunes and dangers; of a radical change in her existence. Her poor brain, of a vulgar and unintellectual woman, performed prodigies in analyzing the unfounded presentiments; what did she fear? On what did she base these fears? While she attempted to define them they weakened, though they still persisted. She reviewed her whole life of hard struggle and scanty rewards; she examined her conduct as an honorable wife and a decent mother of a family, and neither the one nor the other, justified her fear. This stranger woman, this stranger who was about to come; would she rob her of something? Of what? Her children? Surely, no. Of her husband, perhaps? Her presentiment was founded in this doubt; yes, it was only of her husband that she could rob her. And her humble idyl of love, which she had cherished among the ancient things of her memory, as she cherished in her clothes-press some few artificial flowers, shriveled and yellowed, from her bridal crown, her idyl revived, shriveled and yellowed also, but demanding an absolute fidelity in Julio; not equal to her own; no, Julio’s fidelity had to be different, but it must be; but, however much Carmen assured herself, with the mute assurances of her will, that Julio was faithful, she continued to be possessed by the idea that he would sometime prove unfaithful, just because of the long period of their marriage, that cruel irony of the years which respect nothing, neither a loving marriage nor the hearth which belonged to us in infancy; the marital affection is choked by the ivy of disgust and the bind-weed of custom; the home disappears covered by the weeds, which grow and grow until they overtop the very pinnacle of the façade. Carmen then appreciated some things before not understood; all the little repugnances and the shrinking apart of two bodies, which had long lived in contact and no longer have surprises to exchange, no new sensations to offer, no curves that are not known, no kisses that are unlike those other kisses, those of sweethearts and the newly-wed, then novel and celestial, afterward repeated without enthusiasm as a faint memory of those gone never to return. Believing that Julio was yet in word and deed her own, she resolved to carry on a slow reconquest, displaying the charms of a chaste coquetry; her instincts of a woman, assuring her that this was the infallible mode of salvation.
But on considering her attractions marred by child-bearing; her features sharpened by vicissitude; her hands, the innocent pride of her girlhood, deformed by cooking and washing; she felt two tears burn her eyeballs and, unable to gain in a contest of graces and attractions, her face fell upon the table, supported by her arms, in silent grief for her lost youth and her perished beauty.
* * * *
At two o’clock in the morning there was a knocking at the gate and then at her door. It was they, Clothilde and Julio.
“Carmen, the Señora Granada.”
They embraced, without speaking; Clothilde, because gratitude sealed her lips; Carmen, because she could not.
The supper was disagreeable; the dishes were cold, the servant sleepy, those at the table watching one another.