Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/286

 a man had fallen in love with me, he would simply know that it was impossible.

. Don't you exaggerate? Now, really!

. Oh, yes, yes, yes, I do! Of course any affection, any decent treatment even, is offensive to me! I am happy, exquisitely happy. You must have noticed how vivacious and communicative I have been all evening.

. Yes, I did at once. I said to Isabel: "What is the matter with María Antonia? She seems so happy."

. Blissfully happy!

. A nervous sort of happiness—the pretended happiness with which, when we are not thinking of others in the first moments of a great sorrow, we attempt to deceive ourselves. It is a peculiarity of great sorrows; they strike so deep, so very deep into the heart that they seem to be buried in it, and we are horrified that we do not feel them; but the deception does not last long. They are graven there for the remainder of our lives. We shed tears in the beginning, we complain, we rage—then we resign ourselves and bear them with a smile, a sad and mournful smile, like a gaping wound which never heals.

. Isabel has had experience both of wounds and of smiles.

. They appear to be enjoying themselves.

. Another hit of papa's! He is in rare form this evening. Look at him, surrounded by all the ladies in rapt adoration, from Carmen, who would have been a model wife had papa not crossed her path, to calculating Laura, who you would swear was completely monetized, and the bride, who may be a fool, although she has been married only two months—yes, and Luisa, even, bursting forth in her first evening-gown, there they all sit in ecstasy