Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/261

 pain, the anxiety, and the humiliation of the woman might count as nothing and be forgotten—for this a man might have some excuse; but when he does not hesitate to give a woman pain merely to gratify a passing caprice, that is inexcusable; it shows exactly what men think of us.

. Has Pepe?…

. Yes, he has; and his unfaithfulness is more cowardly because it began at a time when of all others I was most deserving of his respect, if not as his wife, as the mother of his child. Who knows but that the horrible mortification of his cowardly, cruel behavior, may not have been the cause of our terrible sorrow? And all for a low, vulgar woman, who is the attraction which he finds in the theatre!

. Oh! So she is the one?

. Yes, and he thinks I suspect nothing. His friend, Castrojeriz, wheedles his money out of him to pay the expenses of his theatre. We shall be ruined and become public laughing-stocks at one and the same time, which I can never submit to, I promise you. I have not your patient disposition.

. My patient disposition?

. Yes, poor Isabel! You are like my own dear mother, as good and as patient as she. Life has had no secrets for me since I was a child. I was brought up alone with my father, or rather without him, for I seldom saw him at all. Nurses and servants did not hesitate to gossip when I was present, nor spare me the details of what they had heard. Aunt Rosario was the only person who really cared for me, and her affection consisted chiefly of an implacable hatred of my father. She was my mother's sister, so she could never forgive him. Her undying hate took no thought of my innocence, she never considered the harm which she did me by destroying my respect for my father,