Renovales felt tempted to choke her. She was making fun of him; she looked on him as a man different from the rest of men, a sort of monk of painting. Eager to wound her, to return the blow, he interrupted once brutally in the midst of her merciless gossip.
"Well, they talk about you, too, Concha. They say things that wouldn't be very pleasing to the count."
He expected an outburst of anger, a protest, and all that resounded in the silence of the studio was a merry, reckless laugh that lasted a long time, stopping occasionally, only to begin again. Then she grew pensive, with the gentle sadness of women who are "misunderstood." She was very unhappy. She could tell him everything because he was a good friend. She had married when she was still a child; a terrible mistake. There was something else in the world besides the glare of fortune, the splendor of luxury and that count's coronet, which had stirred her school-girl's mind.
"We have the right to a little love, and if not love, to a little joy. Don't you think so, Mariano?"
Of course he thought so. And he declared it in such a way, looking at Concha with alarming eyes, that she finally laughed at his frankness and threatened him with her finger.
"Take care, master. Don't forget that Josephina is my friend and if you go astray, I'll tell her everything."
Renovales was irritated at her disposition, always restless and capricious as a bird's, quite as likely to sit down beside him in warm intimacy as to flit away with tormenting banter.
Sometimes she was aggressive, teasing the artist from her very first words, as had just happened that afternoon.
They were silent for a long time—he, painting with an absent-minded air, she watching the movement of the brush, buried in an armchair in the sweet calm of rest.
But the Alberca woman was incapable of remaining silent long. Little by little her usual chatter began, paying no attention to the painter's silence, talking to relieve the convent-like stillness of the studio with her words and laughter.