The painter heard the story of her labors as president of the "Women's League," of the great things she meant to do in the holy undertaking for the emancipation of the sex. And, in passing, led on by her desire of ridiculing all women, she gaily made sport of her co-workers in the great project; unknown literary women, school teachers, whose lives were embittered by their ugliness, painters of flowers and doves, a throng of poor women with extravagant hats and clothes that looked as though they were hung on a bean-pole; feminine Bohemians, rebellious and rabid against their lot, who were proud to have her as their leader and who made it a point to call her "Countess" in sonorous tones at every other word, in order to flatter themselves with the distinction of this friendship. The Alberca woman was greatly amused at her following of admirers; she laughed at their intolerance and their proposals.
"Yes, I know what it is," said Renovales breaking his long silence. "You want to annihilate us, to reign over man, whom you hate."
The countess laughed at the recollection of the fierce feminism of some of her acolytes. As most of them were homely, they hated feminine beauty as a sign of weakness. They wanted the woman of the future to be without hips, without breasts, straight, bony, muscular, fitted for all sorts of manual labor, free from the slavery of love and reproduction. "Down with feminine fat!"
"What a frightful idea! Don't you think so, Mariano?" she continued. "Woman, straight in front and straight behind, with her hair cut short and her hands hardened, competing with men in all sorts of struggles! And they call that emancipation! I know what men are; if they saw us looking like that, in a few days they would be beating us."
No, she was not one of them. She wanted to see a woman triumph, but by increasing still more her charm and her fascination. If they took away her beauty what would she have left? She wanted her to be man's equal in intelligence, his superior by the magic of her beauty.
"I don't hate men, Mariano, I am very much a woman, and I like them. What's the use of denying it?"
"I know it, Concha, I know it," said the painter, with a malicious meaning.
"What do you know? Lies, gossip that people tell about me because I am not a hypocrite and am not always wearing a gloomy expression."
And led on by that desire for sympathy that all women of questionable reputation experience, she spoke once more of her unpleasant situation. Renovales knew the count, a good man in spite of his hobbies, who thought of nothing but his honorary trinkets. She did everything for him, watched out for his comfort, but he was nothing to her. She lacked the most important thing—heart-love.
As she spoke she looked up, with a longing idealism that would have made anyone but Renovales smile.