He had a fire in every fireplace in the house; the rooms were as hot as a furnace. He declared loudly, without any show of excitement, that his wife was merely suffering from a slight cold, and as he spoke with such assurance, a strange voice seemed to cry within him: "You lie, she is dying; she is dying and you know it."
The symptoms of which the doctor had spoken began to appear with ominous regularity in fatal succession. At first he noticed only a constant high fever that seemed to grow worse with severe chills at the end of the afternoon. Then he observed sweats that were terrifying in their frequency—sweats at night that left the print of her body on the sheets. And that poor body, which grew more fragile, more like a skeleton, as if the fire of the fever were devouring the last particle of fat and muscle, was left without any other covering and protection than the skin, and that too seemed to be melting away. She coughed frequently; at all hours of the day and night her painful hacking disturbed the silence of the house. She complained of a continual pain in the lower part of her chest. Her daughter made her eat by dint of coaxing, lifting the spoon to her mouth, as if she were a child. But coughing and nausea made nutrition impossible. Her tongue was dry; she complained of an infernal thirst that was devouring her.
Thus passed a month. Renovales, in his optimistic mood, strove to believe that her illness would not last long.
"She is not dying, Pepe," he would say in a convinced tone, as if he were disposed to quarrel with anyone who opposed this statement. "She is not dying, doctor. You don't think she is, do you?"
The doctor would answer with his everlasting shrug. "Perhaps,—it's possible." And as the patient refused to submit to an internal examination, he was forced to inquire of the daughter and husband about the symptoms.
In spite of her extreme emaciation, some parts of her body seemed to be undergoing an abnormal swelling. Renovales questioned the doctor frankly. What did he think of these symptoms? And the doctor bowed his head. He did not know. They must wait: Nature has surprises. But afterward, with sudden decision, he pretended that he wanted to write a prescription, in order that he might talk with the husband alone in his working studio.
"To tell you the truth, Renovales, this pitiful comedy is getting tiresome. It may be all right for the others but you are a man. It is acute consumption; perhaps a matter of days, perhaps a matter of a few months; but she is dying and I know no remedy. If you want to, get some one else."
"She is dying!" Renovales was dazed with surprise as if the possibility of this outcome had never occurred to him. "She is dying!" And when the doctor had gone away, with a firmer step than usual, as if he had freed himself of a weight, the painter repeated the words to himself, without their producing any other effect than leaving him abstracted in senseless stupidity. She is dying! But was it really possible that that little woman could die, who had so weighed on his life and whose weakness filled him with fear?
Suddenly he found himself walking up and down the studio, repeating aloud,