Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Third series (IA playstranslatedf03benauoft).pdf/95

. What infatuation is this?

. It isn't infatuation. I go to see my daughter.

. Your daughter! What daughter? I didn't know you had a daughter.

. You never asked. What do you know of my life? What other people have told you, who know no more about it than you do, what for some reason I may have seen fit to tell you myself—only I always tell you the truth.

. But this daughter?

. She is the child of the only man I ever loved.

. Thanks.

. And I still love him; I always shall.

. Where is he?

. In prison, reprieved from a death-sentence, serving for life.

. Romantic episode!

. He stabbed a foreigner in Rome, attempting to take his money. He killed him. He had been three days without food. We models could earn nothing then; the malaria had driven out the artists.

. Were you living with him at the time?

. No, he was living with his mother. I lived at home with my parents and my brothers and sisters, with my child. My father owned a house by the riverside, half tavern, half concert-hall. We children did a little of everything. During the day we went out as models; at night we danced tarantellas in the theatre and sang Neapolitan songs. Then Leonardo gave my father five hundred lire to let me come to live with him.

. But Imperia! This is horrible!

. It is the truth. What was my father to do? We had to live somehow.