Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/184

 the world that any one would have fallen in love with, with that old green coat you used to wear—I can see it now—and twenty-five pesetas a week in the Court of Claims. Didn't my parents take me away for a whole summer to Escorial so that I could get you out of my head? But I could not. No, I was young and foolish then, and I loved you, I loved you out of pity like… like… Desdemona loved Othello!

. I know, Josefina, I know. If I ever doubted for one moment, if I have ever ceased to merit your affection

. I remember the first present I ever gave you—half a dozen linen pocket-handkerchiefs to replace that old cotton towel you used to carry and pull out whenever you had a cold. Ay! How it used to mortify me! And in those days you always had a cold.

. I know, my dear, I know. You were so thoughtful, so providing…

. And after we were married, in times of trial and privation, who was it who was the first to economize, to cut herself down? I was. Didn't we go for whole months without a maid, without any servant in the house whatever? And I was laundress and cook, and I helped you translate feuilletons from the French, although they might better have been left untranslated, and I made all my clothes for two years myself so as to appear decently and spend as little upon them as possible, and made them all alike so that nobody could tell when I had new ones, though I never had any, and the worst that you ever heard me say in all that time was that another man in your place would have acted differently, that he wouldn't have been a good-for-nothing, that he would not have behaved himself like an ass! But you never heard me complain. And now you repay all my sacrifices by telling me that I cannot understand anything