But he calmed her, swinging his strong arms, swelling out his lusty chest. He had never felt better. And with the minuteness of a good-natured grandfather he inquired about all the little displeasures of her life. Her husband spent the day with his friends. She grew tired of staying at home and her only amusement was making calls or going shopping. And after that came a complaint, always the same, which the father divined at her first words. López de Sosa was selfish, niggardly toward her. His spendthrift habits never went beyond his own pleasures and his own person; he economized in his wife's expenses. He loved her in spite of that. Milita did not venture to deny it; no mistresses or unfaithfulness. She would be likely to stand that! But he had no money except for his horses and automobiles; she even suspected that he was gambling, and his poor wife lived without a thing to her back, and had to weep her requests every time she received a bill, little trifles of a thousand pesetas or two.
The father was as generous to her as a lover. He felt like pouring at her feet all that he had piled up in long years of labor. She must live in happiness, since she loved her husband! Her worries made him smile scornfully. Money! Josephina's daughter sad because she needed things, when in his house there were so many dirty, insignificant papers which he had worked so hard to win and which he now looked at with indifference! He always went away from these visits amid hugs and a shower of kisses from that big girl who expressed her joy by shaking him disrespectfully, as if he were a child.
"Papa, dear, how good you are! How I love you!"
One night as he left his daughter's house with Cotoner, he said mysteriously:
"Come in the morning, I will show it to you. It isn't finished but I want you to see it. Just you. No one can judge better."
Then he added with the satisfaction of an artist:
"Once I could paint only what I saw. Now I am different. It has cost me a good deal, but you shall judge."
And in his voice there was the joy of difficulties overcome, the certainty that he had produced a great work.
Cotoner came the next day, with the haste of curiosity, and entered the studio closed to others.
"Look!" said the master with a proud gesture.