her subtle will. Ramón was too proud and angry to fight for them. They were her children. Let her have them.
They were the children of his old body. His new body had no children: would probably never have any.
“But remember,” he said to her, with southern logic, “you do not love, save with your will. I don’t like the love you have for your god: it is an assertion of your own will. I don’t like the love you have for me: it is the same. I don’t like the love you have for your children. If ever I see in them a spark of desire to be saved from it, I shall do my best to save them. Meanwhile have your love, have your will. But you know I dislike it. I dislike your insistence. I dislike your monopoly of one feeling, I dislike your charity works. I disapprove of the whole trend of your life. You are weakening and vitiating the boys. You do not love them, you are only putting your love-will over them. One day they will turn and hate you for it. Remember I have said this to you.”
Doña Carlota had trembled in every fibre of her body, under the shock of this. But she went away to the chapel of the Annunciation Convent, and prayed. And, praying for his soul, she seemed to gain a victory over him, in the odour of sanctity. She came home in frail, pure triumph, like a flower that blooms on a grave: his grave.
And Ramón henceforth watched her in her beautiful, rather fluttering, rather irritating gentleness, as he watched his closest enemy.
Life had done its work on