Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) by Vicente Blasco Ibanez (page 4)

“I used to dance naked, with a transparent veil tied around my hips and another floating from my head … I would dance for hours and hours, just like a Brahman priestess before the image of the terrible Siva, and the ‘eye of the morning’ would follow my dances with elegant undulations … I believe in the divine Siva. Don’t you know who Siva is?…”

Ferragut uttered an impatient aside to the gloomy god. What he wanted to know was the reason that had taken her to Java, the paradisiacal and mysterious island.

“My husband was a Dutch commandant,” she said. “We were married in Amsterdam and I followed him to Asia.”

Ulysses protested at this piece of news. Had not her husband been a great student?… Had he not taken her to the Andes in search of prehistoric beasts?…

Freya hesitated a moment in order to be sure, but her doubts were short.

“So he was,” she said as a matter of course. “That professor was my second husband. I have been married twice.”

The captain had not time to express his surprise. Over the top of the tank, on the crystalline surface silvered by the sun, passed a human shadow. It was the, silhouette of the keeper. Down below, the three shapeless bags began to move. Freya was trembling with emotion like an enthusiastic and impatient spectator.

Something fell into the water, descending little by little, a bit of dead sardine that was scattering filaments of meat and yellow scales. An odd community interest appeared to exist among these monsters: only the one nearest the prey bestirred himself to eat. Perhaps they voluntarily took turns; perhaps their glance only reached a little beyond their tentacles.

The one nearest to the glass suddenly unfolded itself with the violence of a spring escaping from an explosive projectile. He gave a bound, remaining fastened to the ground by one of his radiants, and raised the others like a bundle of reptiles. Suddenly he converted himself into a monstrous star, filling almost the entire glassy tank, swollen with rage, and coloring his outer covering with green, blue, and red.

His tentacles clutched the miserable prey, doubling it inward in order to bear it to his mouth. The beast then contracted, and flattened himself out so as to rest on the ground. His armed feet disappeared and there only remained visible a trembling bag through which was passing like a succession of waves, from one extreme to the other, the digestive swollen mass which became a bubbling, mucous pulpiness in a dye-pot that colored and discolored itself with contortions of assimilative fury; from time to time the agglomeration showed its stupid and ferocious eyes.

New victims continued falling down through the waters and other monsters leaped in their turn, spreading out their stars, then shrinking together in order to grind their prey in their entrails with the assimilation of a tiger.

Freya gazed upon this horrifying digestive process with thrills of rapture. Ulysses felt her resting instinctively upon him with a contact growing more intimate every moment. From shoulder to ankle the captain could see the sweet reliefs of her soft flesh whose warmth made itself perceptible through her clothing and filled him with nervous tremors.

Frequently she turned her eyes away from the cruel spectacle, glancing at him quickly with an odd expression. Her pupils appeared enlarged, and the whites of her eyes had a wateriness of morbid reflection. Ferragut felt that thus the insane must look in their great crises.

She was speaking between her teeth, with emotional pauses, admiring the ferocity of the cuttlefish, grieving that she did not possess their vigor and their cruelty.

“If I could only be like them!… To be able to go through the streets … through the world, stretching out my talons!… To devour!… to devour! They would struggle uselessly to free themselves from the winding of my tentacles…. To absorb them!… To eat them!… To cause them to disappear!…”

Ulysses beheld her as on that first day near the temple of the poet, possessed with a fierce wrath against men, longing extravagantly for their extermination.

Their digestion finished, the polypi had begun to swim around, and were now horizontal skeins, fluting the tank with elegance. They appeared like torpedo boats with a conical prow, dragging along the heavy, thick and long hair of their tentacles. Their excited appetite made them glide through the water in all directions, seeking new victims.

Freya protested. The guard had only brought them dead bodies. What she wanted was the struggle, the sacrifice, the death. The bits of sardine were a meal without substance for these bandits that had zest only for food seasoned with assassination.

As though the pulps had understood her complaints, they had fallen on the sandy bottom, flaccid, inert, breathing through their funnels.

A little crab began to descend at the end of a thread desperately moving its claws.

Freya pressed still closer to Ulysses, excited at the thought of the approaching spectacle. One of the bags, transformed into a star, suddenly leaped forward. Its arms writhed like serpents seeking the recent arrival. In vain the guard pulled the thread up, wishing to prolong the chase. The tentacles clamped their irresistible openings upon the body of the victim, pulling upon the line with such force that it broke, the octopus falling on the bottom with his prey.

Freya clapped her hands in applause.

“Bravo!…” She was exceedingly pale, though a feverish heat was coursing through her body.

She leaned toward the crystal in order to see better the devouring activity of that pyramidal stomach which had on its sharp point a diminutive parrot head with two ferocious eyes and around its base the twisted skeins of its arms full of projecting disks. With these it pressed the crab against its mouth, injecting under its shell the venomous output of its salivary glands, paralyzing thus every movement of existence. Then it swallowed its prey slowly with the deglutition of a boa constrictor.

“How beautiful it is!” she said.

The other beasts also seized their live victims, paralyzed and devoured them, moving their flabby bodies in order to permit the passage of their swelling nutritive waves and clouds of various colors.

Then the guard tossed in a crab, but one without any string whatever. Freya screamed with enthusiasm.

This was the kind of hunt that takes place in the ferocious mystery of the sea, a race with death, a destruction preceded with emotional agony and hazards. The poor crustacean, divining its danger, was swimming towards the rocks hoping to take refuge in the nearest crevice. A polypus came up behind it, whilst the others continued their digestion.

“It’s escaping!… It’s escaping!” cried Freya, palpitating with interest.

The crab scrambled through the stones, sheltering itself in their windings. The polypus was no longer swimming; it was running like a terrestrial animal, climbing over the rocks by its armed extremities, which were now serving as apparatus of locomotion. It was the struggle of a tiger with a mouse. When the crab had half of its body already hidden within the green lichens of a hole, one of the heavy serpents fell upon its back clutching it with the irresistible suction of his air-holes, and causing it to disappear within his skein of tentacles.

“Ah!” sighed Freya, throwing herself back as though she were going to faint on Ulysses’ breast.

He shuddered, feeling that a serpentine band of tremulous pressure had encircled his body. The acts of that unbalanced creature were fraying his nerves.

He felt as though a monster of the same class as those in the tank but much larger–a gigantic octopus from the oceanic depths–must have slipped treacherously behind him and was clutching him in one of its tentacles. He could feel the pressure of its feelers around his waist, growing closer and more ferocious.

Freya was holding him captive with one of her arms. She had wound herself tightly around him and was clasping his waist with all her force, as though trying to break his vigorous body in two.

Then he saw the head of this woman approaching him with an aggressive swiftness as if she were going to bite him…. Her enlarged eyes, tearful and misty, appeared to be far off, very far off. Perhaps she was not even looking at him…. Her trembling mouth, bluish with emotion, a round and protruding mouth like an absorbing duct, was seeking the sailor’s mouth, taking possession of it and devouring it with her lips.

It was the kiss of a cupping-glass, long, dominating, painful. Ulysses realized that he had never before been kissed in this way. The water from that mouth surging across her row of teeth, discharged itself in his like swift poison. A shudder unfamiliar until then ran the entire length of his back, making him close his eyes.

He felt as if all his interior had turned to liquid. He had a presentiment that his life was going to date from this kiss, that with it was going to begin a new existence, that he never would be able to free himself from these deadly and caressing lips with their faint savor of cinnamon, of incense, of Asiatic forests haunted with sensuousness and intrigue.

And he let himself be dragged down by the caress of this wild beast, with thought lost and body inert and resigned, like a castaway who descends and descends the infinite strata of the abyss without ever reaching bottom.

CHAPTER VI

THE WILES OF CIRCE

After that kiss, the lover believed that all his desires were about to be immediately realized. The most difficult part of the road was already passed. But with Freya one always had to expect something absurd and inconceivable.

The midday gun aroused them from a rapture that had lasted but a few seconds as long as years. The steps of the guard, growing nearer all the time, finally separated the two and unlocked their arms.

Freya was the first to calm herself. Only a slight haze flitted across her pupils now, like the vapor from a recently extinguished fire.

“Good-by…. They are waiting for me.”

And she went out from the Aquarium followed by Ferragut, still stammering and tremulous. The questions and petitions with which he pursued her while crossing the promenade were of no avail.

“So far and no further,” she said at one of the cross streets of Chiaja. “We shall see one another…. I formally promise you that…. Now leave me.”

And she disappeared with the firm step of a handsome huntress, as serene of countenance as though not recalling the slightest recollection of her primitive, passional paroxysm.

This time she fulfilled her promise. Ferragut saw her every day.

They met in the mornings near the hotel, and sometimes she came down into the dining-room, exchanging smiles and glances with the sailor, who fortunately was sitting at a distant table. Then they took strolls and chatted together, Freya laughing good-naturedly at the amorous vows of the captain…. And that was all.

With a woman’s skillfulness in sounding a man’s depth and penetrating into his secrets,–keeping fast-locked and unapproachable her own,–she gradually informed herself of the incidents and adventures in the life of Ulysses. Vainly he spoke, in a natural reciprocity, of the island of Java, of the mysterious dances before Siva, of the journeys through the lakes of the Andes. Freya had to make an effort to recall them. “Ah!… Yes!” And after giving this distracted exclamation for every answer, she would continue the process of delving eagerly into the former life of her lover. Ulysses sometimes began to wonder if that embrace in the Aquarium could have occurred in his dreams.

One morning the captain managed to bring about the realization of one of his ambitions. He was jealous of the unknown friends that were lunching with Freya. In vain she affirmed that the doctor was the only companion of the hours that she passed outside of the hotel. In order to tranquillize himself, the sailor insisted that the widow should accept his invitations. They ought to extend their strolls; they ought to visit the beautiful outskirts of Naples, lunching in their gay little _trattorias_ or eating-houses.

They ascended together the funicular road of Monte Vomero to the heights crowned by the castle of S. Elmo and the monastery of S. Martino. After admiring in the museum of the abbey the artistic souvenirs of the Bourbon domination and that of Murat, they entered into a nearby _trattoria_ with tables placed on an esplanade from whose balconies they could take in the unforgetable spectacle of the gulf, seeing Vesuvius in the distance and the chain of mountains smoking on the horizon like an immovable succession of dark rose-colored waves.

Naples was extended in horseshoe form on the bow-shaped border of the sea tossing up from its enormous white mass, as though they were bits of foam, the clusters of houses in the suburbs.

A swarthy oysterman, slender, with eyes like live coals, and enormous mustaches, had his stand at the door of the restaurant, offering cockles and shell fish of strong odor that had been half a week perhaps in ascending from the city to the heights of Vomero. Freya jested about the oysterman’s typical good looks and the languishing glances that he was forever casting toward all the ladies that entered the establishment … a prime discovery for a tourist anxious for adventures in local color.

In the background a small orchestra was accompanying a tenor voice or was playing alone, enlarging upon the melodies and amplifying the measures with Neapolitan exaggeration.

Freya felt a childish hilarity upon seating herself at the table, seeing over the cloth the luminous summit. Bisected in the foreground by a crystal vase full of flowers, the distant panorama of the city, the gulf, and its capes spread itself before her eager eyes. The air on this peak enchanted her after two weeks passed without stirring outside of Naples. The harps and violins gave the situation a pathetic thrill and served as a background for conversation, just as the vague murmurs of a hidden orchestra give the effect in the theater of psalmody or of melancholy verses moving the listener to tears.

They ate with the nervousness which joy supplies. At some tables further on a young man and woman were forgetting the courses in order to clasp hands underneath the cloth and place knee against knee with frenzied pressure. The two were smiling, looking at the landscape and then at each other. Perhaps they were foreigners recently married, perhaps fugitive lovers, realizing in this picturesque spot the billing and cooing so many times anticipated in their distant courtship.

Two English doctors from a hospital ship, white haired and uniformed, were disregarding their repast in order to paint directly in their albums, with a childish painstaking crudeness, the same panorama that was portrayed on the postal cards offered for sale at the door of the restaurant.

A fat-bellied bottle with a petticoat of straw and a long neck attracted Freya’s hands to the table. She ridiculed the sobriety of Ferragut, who was diluting with water the reddish blackness of the Italian wine.

“Thus your ancestors, the Argonauts, must have drunk,” she said gayly. “Thus your grandfather, Ulysses, undoubtedly drank.”

And herself filling the captain’s glass with an exaggeratedly careful division of the parts of water and wine, she added gayly:

“We are going to make a libation to the gods.”

These libations were very frequent. Freya’s peals of laughter made the Englishmen, interrupted in their conscientious work, turn their glances toward her. The sailor felt himself overcome by a warm feeling of well-being, by a sensation of repose and confidence, as though this woman were unquestionably his already.

Seeing that the two lovers, terminating their luncheon hastily, were arising with blushing precipitation as though overpowered by some sudden desire, his glance became tender and fraternal…. Adieu, adieu, companions!

The voice of the widow recalled him to reality.

“Ulysses, make love to me…. You haven’t yet told me this whole day long that you love me.”

In spite of the smiling and mocking tone of this order, he obeyed her, repeating once more his promises and his desires. Wine was giving to his words a thrill of emotion; the musical moaning of the orchestra was exciting his sensibilities and he was so touched with his own eloquence that his eyes slightly filled with tears.

The high voice of the tenor, as though it were an echo of Ferragut’s thought, was singing a romance of the fiesta of Piedigrotta, a lamentation of melancholy love, a canticle of death, the final mother of hopeless lovers.

“All a lie!” said Freya, laughing. “These Mediterraneans…. What comedians they are for love!…”

Ulysses was uncertain as to whether she was referring to him or to the singer. She continued talking, placid and disdainful at the same time, because of their surroundings.

“Love,… love! In these countries they can’t talk of anything else. It is almost an industry, somewhat scrupulously prepared for the credulous and simple people from the North. They all harp on love: this howling singer, you … even the oysterman….”

Then she added maliciously:

“I ought to warn you that you have a rival. Be very careful, Ferragut!”

She turned her head in order to look at the oysterman. He was occupied in the contemplation of a fat lady with grisled hair and abundant jewels, a lady escorted by her husband, who was looking with astonishment at the vendor’s killing glances without being able to understand them.

The lady-killer was stroking his mustache affectedly, looking from time to time at his cloth suit in order to smooth out the wrinkles and brush off the specks of dust. He was a handsome pirate disguised as a gentleman. Upon noticing Freya’s interest, he changed the course of his glances, poised his fine figure and replied to her questioning eyes with the smile of a bad angel, making her understand his discretion and skillfulness in ingratiating himself behind husbands and escorts.

“There he is!” cried Freya with peals of laughter. “I already have a new admirer!…”

The swarthy charmer was restrained by the scandalous publicity with which this lady was receiving his mysterious insinuations. Ferragut spoke of knocking the scamp down on his oyster shells with a good pair of blows.

“Now don’t be ridiculous,” she protested. “Poor man! Perhaps he has a wife and many children…. He is the father of a family and wants to take money home.”

There was a long silence between the two. Ulysses appeared offended by the lightness and cruelty of his companion.

“Now don’t you be cross,” she said. “See here, my shark! Smile a bit. Show me your teeth…. The libations to the gods are to blame. Are you offended because I wished to compare you with that clown?… What if you are the only man that I appreciate at all!… Ulysses, I am speaking to you seriously,–with all the frankness that wine gives. I ought not to tell you so, but I admit it…. If I should ever love a man, that man would be you.”

Ferragut instantly forgot all his irritation in order to listen to her and envelop her in the adoring light of his eyes. Freya averted her glance while speaking, not wishing to meet his eye, as though she were weighing what she was saying while her glance wandered over the widespread landscape.

Ulysses’ origin was what interested her most. She who had traveled over almost the entire world, had trodden the soil of Spain only a few hours, when disembarking in Barcelona from the transatlantic liner which he had commanded. The Spaniards inspired her both with fear and attraction. A noble gravity reposed in the depths of their ardent hyperbole.

“You are an exaggerated being, a meridional who enlarges everything and lies about everything, believing all his own lies. But I am sure that if you should ever be really in love with me, without fine phrases or passionate fictions, your affection would be more sane and deep than that of other men…. My friend, the doctor, says that you are a crude people and that you have only simulated the nervousness, unbalanced behavior, and intrigues that accompany love in other civilized countries even to refinement.”

Freya looked at the sailor, making a long pause.

“Therefore you strike,” she continued, “therefore you kill when you feel love and jealousy. You are brutes but not mediocre. You do not abandon a woman intentionally; you do not exploit her…. You are a new species of man for me, who has known so many. If I were able to believe in love, I would have you at my side all my life…. All my life long!”

A light, gentle music, like the vibration of fragile and delicate crystal, spread itself over the terrace. Freya followed its rhythm with a light motion of the head. She was accustomed to this cloying music, this _Serenata_ of Toselli,–a passionate lament that always touches the soul of the tourist in the halls of the grand hotels. She, who at other times had ridiculed this artificial and refined little music, now felt tears welling up in her eyes.

“Not to be able to love anybody!” she murmured. “To wander alone through the world!… And love is such a beautiful thing!”

She guessed what Ferragut was going to say,–his protest of eternal passion, his offer to unite his life to hers forever, and she cut his words short with an energetic gesture.

“No, Ulysses, you do not know me; you do not know who I am…. Go far from me. Some days ago it was a matter of indifference to me. I hate men and do not mind injuring them, but now you inspire me with a certain interest because I believe you are good and frank in spite of your haughty exterior…. Go! Do not seek me. This is the best proof of affection that I can give you.”

She said this vehemently, as if she saw Ferragut running toward danger and was crying out in order to ward him from it.

“On the stage,” she continued, “there is a role that they call ‘The Fatal Woman,’ and certain artists are not able to play any other part. They were born to represent this personage…. I am a ‘Fatal Woman,’ but really and truly…. If you could know my life!… It is better that you do not know it; even I wish to ignore it. I am happy only when I forget it…. Ferragut, my friend, bid me farewell, and do not cross my path again.”

But Ferragut protested as though she were proposing a cowardly thing to him. Flee? Loving her so much? If she had enemies, she could rely upon him for her defense; if she wanted wealth, he wasn’t a millionaire, but….

“Captain,” interrupted Freya, “go back to your own people. I was not meant for you. Think of your wife and son; follow your own life. I am not the conquest that is cherished for a few weeks, no more. Nobody can trust me with impunity. I have suckers just like the animals that we saw the other day; I burn and sting just like those transparent parasols in the Aquarium. Flee, Ferragut!…. Leave me alone…. Alone!”

And the image of the immense barrenness of her lonely future made the tears gush from her eyes.

The music had ceased. A motionless waiter was pretending to look far away, while really listening to their conversation. The two Englishmen had interrupted their painting in order to glare at this _gentleman_ who was making a lady weep. The sailor began to feel the nervous disquietude which a difficult situation creates.

“Ferragut, pay and let us go,” she said, divining his state of mind.

While Ulysses was giving money to the waiters and musicians, she dried her eyes and repaired the ravages to her complexion, drawing from her gold-mesh bag a powder puff and little mirror in whose oval she contemplated herself for a long time.

As they passed out, the oysterman turned his back, pretending to be very much occupied in the arrangement of the lemons that were adorning his stand. She could not see his face, but she guessed, nevertheless, that he was muttering a bad word,–the most terrible that can be said of a woman.

They went slowly toward the station of the funicular road, through solitary streets and between garden walls one side of which was yellow in the golden sunlight and the other blue in the shade. She it was who sought Ulysses’ arm, supporting herself on it with a childish abandon as if fatigue had overcome her after the first few steps.

Ferragut pressed this arm close against his body, feeling at once the stimulus of contact. Nobody could see them; their footsteps resounded on the pavements with the echo of an abandoned place. The fermented ardor of those libations to the gods was giving the captain a new audacity.

“My poor little darling!… Dear little crazy-head!…” he murmured, drawing closer to him Freya’s head which was resting on one of his shoulders.

He kissed her without her making any resistance. And she in turn kissed him, but with a sad, light, faint-hearted kiss that in no way recalled the hysterical caress of the Aquarium. Her voice, which appeared to be coming from afar off, was repeating what she had counseled him in the _trattoria_.

“Begone, Ulysses! Do not see me any more. I tell you this for your own good…. I bring trouble. I should be sorry to have you curse the moment in which you met me.”

The sailor took advantage of all the windings of the streets in order to cut these recommendations short with his kisses. She advanced limply as though towed by him with no will power of her own, as though she were walking in her sleep. A voice was singing with diabolic satisfaction in the captain’s brain:

“Now it is ripe!… Now it is ripe!…”

And he continued pulling her along always in a direct line, not knowing whither he was going, but sure of his triumph.

Near the station an old man approached the pair,–a white-haired, respectable gentleman with an old jacket and spectacles. He gave them the card of a hotel which he owned in the neighborhood, boasting of the good qualities of its rooms. “Every modern comfort…. Hot water.” Ferragut spoke to her familiarly:

“Would you like?… Would you like?…”

She appeared to wake up, dropping his arm brusquely.

“Don’t be crazy, Ulysses…. That will never be…. Never!”

And drawing herself up magnificently, she entered the station with a haughty step, without looking around, without noticing whether Ferragut was following her or abandoning her.

During the long wait and the descent to the city Freya appeared as ironical and frivolous as though she had no recollection of her recent indignation. The sailor, under the weight of his failure and the unusual libations, relapsed into sulky silence.

In the district of Chiaja they separated. Ferragut, finding himself alone, felt more strongly than ever the effects of the intoxication that was dominating him, the intoxication of a temperate man overcome by the intense surprise of novelty.

For a moment he had a forlorn idea of going to his boat. He needed to give orders, to contend with somebody; but the weakness of his knees pushed him toward his hotel and he flung himself face downward on the bed,–whilst his hat rolled on the floor,–content with the sobriety with which he had reached his room without attracting the attention of the servants.

He fell asleep immediately, but scarcely had night fallen before his eyes opened again, or at least he believed that they opened, seeing everything under a light which was not that of the sun.

Some one had entered the room, and was coming on tiptoe towards his bed. Ulysses, who was not able to move, saw out of the tail of one eye that what was approaching was a woman and that this woman appeared to be Freya. Was it really she?…

She had the same countenance, the blonde hair, the black and oriental eyes, the same oval face. It was Freya and it was not, just as twins exactly alike physically, nevertheless have an indefinable something which differentiates them.

The vague thoughts which for some time past had been slowly undermining his subconsciousness with dull, subterranean labor, now cleared the air with explosive force. Whenever he had seen the widow this subconsciousness had asserted itself, forewarning him that he had known her long before that transatlantic voyage. Now, under a light of fantastic splendor, these vague thoughts assumed definite shape.

The sleeper thought he was looking at Freya clad in a bodice with flowing sleeves adjusted to the arms with filagree buttons of gold; some rather barbarous gems were adorning her bosom and ears, and a flowered skirt was covering the rest of her person. It was the classic costume of a farmer’s wife or daughter of other centuries that he had seen somewhere in a painting. Where?… Where?…

“Dona Constanza!…”

Freya was the counterpart of that august Byzantian queen. Perhaps she was the very same, perpetuated across the centuries, through extraordinary incarnations. In that moment Ulysses would have believed anything possible.

Besides he was very little concerned with the reasonableness of things just now; the important thing to him was that they should exist; and Freya was at his side; Freya and that other one, welded into one and the same woman, clad like the Grecian sovereign.

Again he repeated the sweet name that had illuminated his infancy with romantic splendor. “Dona Constanza! Oh, Dona Constanza!…” And night overwhelmed him, cuddling his pillow as when he was a child, and falling asleep enraptured with thoughts of the young widow of “Vatacio the Heretic.”

When he met Freya again the next day, he felt attracted by a new force,–the redoubled interest that people in dreams inspire. She might really be the empress resuscitated in a new form as in the books of chivalry, or she might simply be the wandering widow of a learned sage,–for the sailor it was all the same thing. He desired her, and to his carnal desire was added others less material,–the necessity of seeing her for the mere pleasure of seeing her, of hearing her, of suffering her negatives, of being repelled in all his advances.

She had pleasant memories of the expedition to the heights of S. Martino.

“You must have thought me ridiculous because of my sensitiveness and my tears. You, on the other hand, were as you always are, impetuous and daring…. The next time we shall drink less.”

The “next time” was an invitation that Ferragut repeated daily. He wanted to take her to dine at one of the _trattorias_ on the road to Posilipo where they could see spread at their feet the entire gulf, colored with rose by the setting sun.

Freya had accepted his invitation with the enthusiasm of a school girl. These strolls represented for her hours of joy and liberty, as though her long sojourns with the doctor were filled with monotonous service.

One evening Ulysses was waiting for her far from the hotel so as to avoid the porter’s curious stares. As soon as they met and glanced toward the neighboring cab-stand, four vehicles advanced at the same time–like a row of Roman chariots anxious to win the prize in the circus–with a noisy clattering of hoofs, cracking of whips, wrathful gesticulations and threatening appeals to the Madonna. Listening to their Neapolitan curses, Ferragut believed for an instant that they were going to kill one another…. The two climbed into the nearest vehicle, and immediately the tumult ceased. The empty coaches returned to occupy their former place in the line, and the deadly rivals renewed their placid and laughing conversation.

An enormous upright plume was waving on their horses’ heads. The cabman, in order not to be discourteous to his two clients, would occasionally turn half-way around, giving them explanations.

“Over there,” and he pointed with his whip, “is the road of Piedigrotta. The gentleman ought to see it on a day of fiesta in September. Few return from it with a firm step. _S. Maria di Piedigrotta_ enabled Charles III to put the Austrians to flight in Velletri…. _Aooo!_”

He moved his whip like a fishing rod over the upright plume, increasing the steed’s pace with a professional howl…. And as though his cry were among the sweetest of melodies, he continued talking, by association of ideas:

“At the fiesta of _Piedigrotta_, when I was a boy, were given out the best songs of the year. There was proclaimed the latest fashionable love song, and long after we had forgotten it foreigners would come here repeating it as though it was a novelty.”

He made a short pause.

“If the lady and gentleman wish,” he continued, “I will take them, on returning, to _Piedigrotta_. Then we’ll see the little church of _S. Vitale_. Many foreign ladies hunt for it in order to put flowers on the sepulcher of a hunch-back who made verses,–Giacomo Leopardi.”

The silence with which his two clients received these explanations made him abandon his mechanical oratory in order to take a good look at them. The gentleman was taking the lady’s hand and was pressing it, speaking in a very low tone. The lady was pretending not to listen to him, looking at the villas and the gardens at the left of the road sloping down toward the sea.

With noble magnanimity, however, the driver still wished to instruct his indifferent clients, showing them with the point of his whip the beauty and wonders of his repertoire.

“That church is _S. Maria del Parto_, sometimes called by others the _Sannazaro._ _Sannazaro_ was also a noted poet who described the loves of shepherdesses, and Frederick II of Aragon made him the gift of a villa with gardens in order that he might write with greater comfort… Those were other days, sir! His heirs converted it into a church and—-“

The voice of the coachman stopped short. Behind him the pair were talking in an incomprehensible language, without paying the slightest attention to him, without acknowledging his erudite explanations. Ignorant foreigners!… And he said no more, wrapping himself in offended silence, relieving his Neapolitan verbosity with a series of shouts and grunts to his horse.

The new road from Posilipo, the work of Murat, skirted the gulf, rising along the mountain edge and constantly emphasizing the declivity between the covering of its feet and the border of the sea. On this hanging slope may be seen villas with white or rosy facades midst the splendor of a vegetation that is always green and glossy. Beyond the colonnades of palm trees and parasol pines, appeared the gulf like a blue curtain, its upper edge showing above the murmuring tops of the trees.

An enormous edifice appeared facing the water. It was a palace in ruins, or rather a roofless palace never finished, with thick walls and huge windows. On the lower floor the waves entered gently through doors and windows which served as rooms of refuge for the fishermen’s skiffs.

The two travelers were undoubtedly talking about this ruin, and the forgiving coachman forgot his snub in order to come to their aid.

“That is what many people call the Palace of Queen Joanna…. A mistake, sir. Ignorance of the uneducated people! That is the _Palazzo di Donn’ Anna_, and _Donna Anna Carafa_ was a great Neapolitan _signora_, wife of the Duke of Medina, the Spanish viceroy who constructed the palace for her and was not able to finish it.”…

He was about to say more but stopped himself. Ah, no! By the Madonna!… Again they had begun to talk, without listening to him…. And he finally took refuge in offended silence, while they chattered continually behind his back.

Ferragut felt an interest in the remote love-affairs of the Neapolitan great lady with the prudent and aristocratic Spanish magnate. His passion had made the grave viceroy commit the folly of constructing a palace in the sea. The sailor was also in love with a woman of another race and felt equal desires to do whimsical things for her.

“I have read the mandates of Nietzsche,” he said to her, by way of explaining his enthusiasm,–“‘seek thy wife outside thy country.’ That is the best thing.”

Freya smiled sadly.

“Who knows?… That would complicate love with the prejudices of national antagonism. That would create children with a double country who would end by belonging to none, who would wander through the world like mendicants with no place of refuge…. I know something about that.”

And again she smiled with sadness and skepticism.

Ferragut was reading the signs of the _trattorias_ on both sides of the highway: “The Ledge of the Siren,” “The Joy of Parthenope,” “The Cluster of Flowers.”… And meanwhile he was squeezing Freya’s hand, putting his fingers upon the inner side of her wrist and caressing her skin that trembled at every touch.

The coachman let the horse slowly ascend the continuous ascent of Posilipo. He was now concerned in not turning around and not being troublesome. He knew well what they were talking about behind him. “Lovers,–people who do not wish to arrive too soon!” And he forgot to be offended, gloating over the probable generosity of a gentleman in such good company.

Ulysses made him stop on the heights of Posilipo. It was there where he had eaten a famous “sailor’s soup,” and where they sold the best oysters from Fusaro. At the right of the road, there arose a pretentious and modern edifice with the name of a restaurant in letters of gold. On the opposite side was the annex, a terraced garden that slipped away down to the sea, and on these terraces were tables in the open air or little low roofed cottages whose walls were covered with climbing vines. These latter constructions had discreet windows opening upon the gulf at a great height thus forestalling any outside curiosity.

Upon receiving Ferragut’s generous tip, the coachman greeted him with a sly smile, that confidential gesture of comradeship which passes down through all the social strata, uniting them as simple men. He had brought many folk to this discreet garden with its locked dining-rooms overlooking the gulf. “A good appetite to you, _Signore_!”

The old waiter who came to meet them on the little sloping footpath made the identical grimace as soon as he spied Ferragut. “I have whatever the gentleman may need.” And crossing a low, embowered terrace with various unoccupied tables, he opened a door and bade them enter a room having only one window.

Freya went instinctively toward it like an insect toward the light, leaving behind her the damp and gloomy room whose paper was hanging loose at intervals. “How beautiful!” The gulf pictured through the window appeared like an unframed canvas,–the original, alive and palpitating,–of the infinite copies throughout the world.

Meanwhile the captain, while informing himself of the available dishes, was secretly following the discreet sign language of the waiter. With one hand he was holding the door half open, his fingers fumbling with an enormous archaic bolt on the under side which had belonged to a much larger door and looked as though it were going to fall from the wood because of its excessive size…. Ferragut surmised that this bolt was going to count heavily, with all its weight, in the bill for dinner.

Freya interrupted her contemplation of the panorama on feeling Ferragut’s lips trying to caress her neck.

“None of that, Captain!… You know well enough what we have agreed. Remember that I have accepted your invitation on the condition that you leave me in peace.”

She permitted his kiss to pass across her cheek, even reaching her mouth. This caress was already an accepted thing. As it had the force of custom, she did not resist it, remembering the preceding ones, but fear of his abusing it made her withdraw from the window.

“Let us examine the enchanted palace which my true love has promised me,” she said gayly in order to distract Ulysses from his insistence.

In the center there was a table made of planks badly planed and with rough legs. The covers and the dishes would hide this horror. Passing her eyes scrutinizingly over the old seats, the walls with their loose papering and the chromos in greenish frames, she spied something dark, rectangular and deep occupying one corner of the room. She did not know whether it was a divan, a bed or a funeral catafalque. The shabby covers that were spread over it reminded one of the beds of the barracks or of the prison.

“Ah, no!…” Freya made one bound toward the door. She would never be able to eat beside that filthy piece of furniture which had come from the scum of Naples. “Ah, no! How loathesome!”

Ulysses was standing near the door, fearing that Freya’s discoveries might go further, and hiding with his back that bolt which was the waiter’s pride. He stammered excuses but she mistook his insistence, thinking that he was trying to lock her in.

“Captain, let me pass!” she said in an angry voice. “You do not know me. That kind of thing is for others…. Back, if you do not wish me to consider you the lowest kind of fellow….”

And she pushed him as she went out, in spite of the fact that Ulysses was letting her pass freely, reiterating his excuses and laying all the responsibility on the stupidity of the servant.

She stopped under the arbor, suddenly tranquillized upon finding herself with her back to the room.

“What a den!”… she said. “Come over here, Ferragut. We shall be much more comfortable in the open air looking at the gulf. Come, now, and don’t be babyish!… All is forgotten. You were not to blame.”

The old waiter, who was returning with table-covers and dishes, did not betray the slightest astonishment at seeing the pair installed on the terrace. He was accustomed to these surprises and evaded the lady’s eye like a convicted criminal, looking at the gentleman with the forlorn air which he always employed when announcing that there was no more of some dish on the bill of fare. His gestures of quiet protection were trying to console Ferragut for his failure. “Patience and tenacity!”… He had seen much greater difficulties overcome by his clientele.

Before serving dinner he placed upon the table, in the guise of an aperitive, a fat-bellied bottle of native wine, a nectar from the slopes of Vesuvius with a slight taste of sulphur. Freya was thirsty and was suspicious of the water of the _trattoria_. Ulysses must forget his recent mortification…. And the two made their libations to the gods, with an unmixed drink in which not a drop of water cut the jeweled transparency of the precious wine.

A group of singers and dancers now invaded the terrace. A coppery-hued girl, handsome and dirty, with wavy hair, great gold hoops in her ears and an apron of many colored stripes, was dancing under the arbor, waving on high a tambourine that was almost the size of a parasol. Two bow-legged youngsters, dressed like ancient lazzarones in red caps, were accompanying with shouts the agitated dance of the _tarantella_.

The gulf was taking on a pinkish light under the oblique rays of the sun, as though there were growing within it immense groves of coral. The blue of the sky had also turned rosy and the mountain seemed aflame in the afterglow. The plume of Vesuvius was less white than in the morning; its nebulous column, streaked with reddish flutings by the dying light, appeared to be reflecting its interior fire.

Ulysses felt the friendly placidity that a landscape contemplated in childhood always inspires. Many a time he had seen this same panorama with its dancing girls and its volcano there in his old home at Valencia; he had seen it on the fans called “Roman Style” that his father used to collect.

Freya felt as moved as her companion. The blue of the gulf was of an extreme intensity in the parts not reflected by the sun; the coast appeared of ochre; although the houses had tawdry facades, all these discordant elements were now blended and interfused in subdued and exquisite harmony. The shrubbery was trembling rhythmically under the breeze. The very air was musical, as though in its waves were vibrating the strings of invisible harps.

This was for Freya the true Greece imagined by the poets, not the island of burned-out rocks denuded of vegetation that she had seen and heard spoken of in her excursions through the Hellenic archipelago.

“To live here the rest of my life!” she murmured with misty eyes. “To die here, forgotten, alone, happy!…”

Ferragut also would like to die in Naples … but with her!… And his quick and exuberant imagination described the delights of life for the two,–a life of love and mystery in some one of the little villas, with a garden peeping out over the sea on the slopes of Posilipo.

The dancers had passed down to the lower terrace where the crowd was greater. New customers were entering, almost all in pairs, as the day was fading. The waiter had ushered some highly-painted women with enormous hats, followed by some young men, into the locked dining-room. Through the half-open door came the noise of pursuit, collision and rebound with brutal roars of laughter.

Freya turned her back, as if the memory of her passage through that den offended her.

The old waiter now devoted himself to them, beginning to serve dinner. To the bottle of Vesuvian wine had succeeded another kind, gradually losing its contents.

The two ate little but felt a nervous thirst which made them frequently reach out their hands toward the glass. The wine was depressing to Freya. The sweetness of the twilight seemed to make it ferment, giving it the acrid perfume of sad memories.

The sailor felt arising within him the aggressive fever of temperate men when becoming intoxicated. Had he been with a man he would have started a violent discussion on any pretext whatever. He did not relish the oysters, the sailor’s soup, the lobster, everything that another time, eaten alone or with a passing friend in the same site, would have appeared to him as delicacies.

He was looking at Freya with enigmatical eyes while, in his thought, wrath was beginning to bubble. He almost hated her on recalling the arrogance with which she had treated him, fleeing from that room. “Hypocrite!…” She was just amusing herself with him. She was a playful and ferocious cat prolonging the death-agony of the mouse caught in her claws. In his brain a brutal voice was saying, as though counseling a murder: “This will be her last day!… I’ll finish her to-day!… No more after to-day!…” After several repetitions, he was disposed to the greatest violence in order to extricate himself from a situation which he thought ridiculous.

And she, ignorant of her companion’s thought, deceived by the impassiveness of his countenance, continued chatting with her glance fixed on the horizon, talking in an undertone as though she were recounting to herself her illusions.

The momentary suggestion of living in a cottage of Posilipo, completely alone, an existence of monastic isolation with all the conveniences of modern life, was dominating her like an obsession.

“And yet, after all,” she continued, “this atmosphere is not favorable to solitude; this landscape is for love. To grow old slowly, two who love each other, before the eternal beauty of the gulf!… What a pity that I have never been really loved!…”

This was an offense against Ulysses who expressed his annoyance with all the aggressiveness that was seething beneath his bad humor. How about him?… Was he not loving her and disposed to prove it to her by all manner of sacrifices?…

Sacrifices as proof of love always left this woman cold, accepting them with a skeptical gesture.

“All men have told me the same thing,” she added; “they all promise to kill themselves if I do not love them…. And with the most of them it is nothing more than a phrase of passionate rhetoric. And what if they did kill themselves really? What does that prove?… To leave life on the spur of a moment that gives no opportunity for repentance;–a simple nervous flash, a posture many times assumed simply for what people will say, with the frivolous pride of an actor who likes to pose in graceful attitudes. I know what all that means. A man once killed himself for me….”

On hearing these last words Ferragut jerked himself out of his sullen silence. A malicious voice was chanting in his brain, “Now there are three!…”

“I saw him dying,” she continued, “on a bed of the hotel. He had a red spot like a star on the bandage of his forehead,–the hole of the pistol shot. He died clutching my hands, swearing that he loved me and that he had killed himself for me … a tiresome, horrible scene…. And nevertheless I am sure that he was deceiving himself, that he did not love me. He killed himself through wounded vanity on seeing that I would have nothing to do with him,–just for stubbornness, for theatrical effect, influenced by his readings…. He was a Roumanian tenor. That was in Russia…. I have been an actress a part of my life….”

The sailor wished to express the astonishment that the different changes of this mysterious wandering existence, always showing a new facet, were producing in him; but he contained himself in order to listen better to the cruel counsels of the malignant voice speaking within his thoughts…. He was not trying to kill himself for her. Quite the contrary! His moody aggressiveness was considering her as the next victim. There was in his eyes something of the dead _Triton_ when in pursuit of a distant woman’s skirt on the coast.

Freya continued speaking.

“To kill one’s self is not a proof of love. They all promise me the sacrifice of their existence from the very first words. Men don’t know any other song. Don’t imitate them, Captain.”

She remained pensive a long time. Twilight was rapidly falling; half the sky was of amber and the other half of a midnight blue in which the first stars were beginning to twinkle. The gulf was drowsing under the leaden coverlet of its water, exhaling a mysterious freshness that was spreading to the mountains and trees. All the landscape appeared to be acquiring the fragility of crystal. The silent air was trembling with exaggerated resonance, repeating the fall of an oar in the boats that, small as flies, were slipping along under the sky arching above the gulf, and prolonging the feminine and invisible voices passing through the groves on the heights.

The waiter went from table to table, distributing candles enclosed in paper shades. The mosquitoes and moths, revived by the twilight, were buzzing around these red and yellow flowers of light.

Her voice was again sounding in the twilight air with the vagueness of one speaking in a dream.

“There is a sacrifice greater than that of life,–the only one that can convince a woman that she is beloved. What does life signify to a man like you?… Your profession puts it in danger every day and I believe you capable of risking your life, when tired of land, for the slightest motive….”

She paused again and then continued.

“Honor is worth more than life for certain men,–respectability, the preservation of the place that they occupy. Only the man that would risk his honor and position for me, who would descend to the lowest depths without losing his will to live, would ever be able to convince me…. That indeed would be a sacrifice!”

Ferragut felt alarmed at such words. What kind of sacrifice was this woman about to propose to him?… But he grew calmer as he listened to her. It was all a fancy of her disordered imagination. “She is crazy,” again affirmed the hidden counselor in his brain.

“I have dreamed many times,” she continued, “of a man who would rob for me, who would kill if it was necessary and might have to pass the rest of his years in prison…. My poor thief!… I would live only for him, spending night and day near the walls of his prison, looking through the bars, working like a woman of the village in order to send a good dinner to my outlaw…. That is genuine love and not the cold lies, the theatrical vows of our world.”

Ulysses repeated his mental comment, “She certainly is crazy”–and his thought was so clearly reflected in his eyes that she guessed it.

“Don’t be afraid, Ferragut,” she said, smiling. “I have no thought of exacting such a sacrifice of you. All this that I am talking about is merely fancy, a whimsy invented to fill the vacancy of my soul. ‘Tis the fault of the wine, of our exaggerated libations,–that to-day have been without water,–to the gods…. Just look!”

And she pointed with comical gravity to the two empty bottles that were occupying the center of the table.

Night had fallen. In the dark sky twinkled infinite eyes of starry light. The immense bowl of the gulf was reflecting their sparkles like thousands of will o’ the wisps. The candle shades in the restaurant were throwing purplish spots upon the table covers, casting upon the faces of those who were eating around them violent contrasts of light and shade. From the locked rooms were escaping sounds of kisses, pursuit and falling furniture.

“Let us go!” ordered Freya.

The noise of this vulgar orgy was annoying her as though it were dishonoring the majesty of the night. She needed to move about, to walk in the darkness, to breathe in the freshness of the mysterious shade.

At the garden gate they hesitated before the appeals of various coachmen. Freya was the one who refused their offers. She wished to return to Naples on foot, following the easy descent of the road of Posilipo after their long inaction in the restaurant. Her face was warm and flushed because of the excess of wine.

Ulysses gave her his arm and they began to move through the shadows, insensibly impelled in their march by the ease of the downward slope. Freya knew just what this trip would mean. At the very first step the sailor advised her with a kiss on the neck. He was going to take advantage of all the windings of the road, of the hills and terraces cut through in certain places to show the phosphorescent gulf across the foliage, and of the long shadowy stretch broken only now and then by the public echoes or the lanterns of carriages and tramways….

But these liberties were already an accepted thing. She had taken the first step in the Aquarium: besides, she was sure of her ability to keep her lover at whatever distance she might choose to fix…. And convinced of her power of checking herself in time, she gave herself up like a lost woman.

Never had Ferragut had such a propitious occasion. It was a trysting-place in the mystery of the night with plenty of time ahead of them. The only trouble was the necessity of walking on, of accompanying his embraces and protests of love with the incessant activity of walking. She protested, coming out from her rapture every time that the enamored man would propose that they sit down on the side of the road.

Hope made Ulysses very obedient to Freya, desirous of reaching Naples as soon as possible. Down there in the curve of the light near the gulf was the hotel, and the sailor looked upon it as a place of happiness.

“Say yes,” he murmured in her ear, punctuating his words with kisses, “say that it will be to-night!…”

She did not reply, leaning on the arm that the captain had passed around her waist, letting herself be dragged along as if she were half-fainting, rolling her eyes and offering her lips.

While Ulysses was repeating his pleadings and caresses the voice in his brain was chanting victoriously, “Here it is!… It’s settled now…. The thing now is to get her to the hotel.”

They roamed on for nearly an hour, fancying that only a few minutes had passed by.

Approaching the gardens of the _Villa Nazionale_, near the Aquarium, they stopped an instant. There were fewer people and more life here than in the road to Posilipo. They avoided the electric lights of the _Via Caracciolo_ reflected in the sea,–the two instinctively approaching a bench, and seeking the ebony shade of the trees.

Freya had suddenly become very composed. She appeared annoyed at herself for her languor during the walk. Finding herself near the hotel, she recovered her energy as though in the presence of danger.

“Good-by, Ulysses! We shall see each other again to-morrow…. I am going to pass the night in the doctor’s home.”

The sailor withdrew a little in the shock of surprise. “Was it a jest?…” But no, he could not think that. The very tone of her words displayed firm resolution.

He entreated her humbly with a thick and threatening voice not to go away. At the same time his mental counselor was rancorously chanting, “She’s making a fool of you!… It’s time to put an end to all this…. Make her feel your masculine authority.” And this voice had the same ring as that of the dead _Triton_.

Suddenly occurred a violent, brutal, dishonorable thing. Ulysses threw himself upon her as though he Were going to kill her, holding her tightly in his arms, and the two fell upon the bench, panting and struggling. But this only lasted an instant.

The vigorous Ferragut, trembling with emotion, was only using half of his powers. He suddenly sprang back, raising his two hands to his shoulders. He felt a sharp pain, as though one of his bones had just broken. She had repelled him with a certain Japanese fencing trick that employs the hands as irresistible weapons.

“Ah!… _Tal!_…” he roared, hurling upon her the worst of feminine insults.

And he fell upon her again as though he were a man, uniting to his original purpose the desire of maltreating her, of degrading her, of making her his.

Freya awaited him firmly… Seeing the icy glitter of her eyes, Ulysses without knowing why recalled the “eye of the morning,” the companionable reptile of her dances.

In this furious onslaught he was stopped by the simple contact on his forehead of a diminutive metal circle, a kind of frozen thimble that was resting on his skin.

He looked… It was a little revolver, a deadly toy of shining nickel. It had appeared in Freya’s hand, drawn secretly from her clothes, or perhaps from that gold-mesh bag whose contents seemed inexhaustible.

She was looking at him fixedly with her finger on the trigger. He surmised her familiarity with the weapon that she had in her hand. It could not be the first time that she had had recourse to it.

The sailor’s indecision was brief. With a man, he would have taken possession of the threatening hand, twisting it until he broke it, without the slightest fear of the revolver. But he had opposite him a woman … and this woman was entirely capable of wounding him, and at the same time placing him in a ridiculous situation.

“Retire, sir!” ordered Freya with a ceremonious and threatening tone as though she were speaking to an utter stranger.

But it was she who retired finally, seeing that Ulysses stepped back, thoughtful and confused. She turned her back on him at the same time that the revolver disappeared from her hand.

Before departing, she murmured some words that Ferragut was not able to understand, looking at him for the last time with contemptuous eyes. They must be terrible insults, and just because she was uttering them in a mysterious language, he felt her scorn more deeply.

“It cannot be…. It is all ended. It is ended forever!…”

She said this repeatedly before returning to her hotel. And he thought of it during all the wakeful night between agonizing attacks of nightmare. When the morning was well advanced the bugles of the _bersaglieri_ awakened him from a heavy sleep.

He paid his bill in the manager’s office and gave a last tip to the porter, telling him that a few hours later a man from the ship would come for his baggage.

He was happy, with the forced happiness of one obliged to accommodate himself to circumstances. He congratulated himself upon his liberty as though he had gained this liberty of his own free will and it had not been imposed upon him by her scorn. Since the memory of the preceding day pained him, putting him in a ridiculous and gross light, it was better not to recall the past.

He stopped in the street to take a last look at the hotel. “Adieu, accursed _albergo_!… Never will I see you again. Would that you might burn down with all your occupants!”

Upon treading the deck of the _Mare Nostrum_, his enforced satisfaction became immeasurably increased. Here only could he live far from the complications and illusions of terrestrial life.

All those aboard who in previous weeks had feared the arrival of the ill-humored captain, now smiled as though they saw the sun coming out after a tempest. He distributed kindly words and affectionate grasps of the hand. The repairs were going to be finished the following day…. Very good! He was entirely content. Soon they would be on the sea again.

In the galley he greeted Uncle Caragol…. That man _was_ a philosopher. All the women in the world were not in his estimation worth a good dish of rice. Ah, the great man!… He surely was going to live to be a hundred! And the cook flattered by such praises, whose origin he did not happen to comprehend, responded as always,–“That is so, my captain.”

Toni, silent, disciplined and familiar, inspired him with no less admiration. His life was an upright life, firm and plain, as the road of duty. When the young officials used to talk in his presence of boisterous suppers on shore with women from distant countries, the pilot had always shrugged his shoulders. “Money and pleasure ought to be kept for the home,” he would say sententiously.

Ferragut had laughed many times at the virtue of his mate who, timid and torpid, used to pass over a great part of the planet without permitting himself any distraction whatever, but would awake with an overpowering tension whenever the chances of their voyage brought him the opportunity of a few days’ stay in his home in the _Marina_.

And with the tranquil grossness of the virtuous stay-at-home, he was accustomed to calculate the dates of his voyages by the age of his eight children. “This one was on returning from the Philippines…. This other one after I was in the coast trade in the Gulf of California….”

His methodical serenity, incapable of being perturbed by frivolous adventures, made him guess from the very first the secret of the captain’s enthusiasm and wrath. “It must be a woman,” he said to himself, upon seeing him installed in a hotel in Naples, and after feeling the effects of his bad humor in the fleeting appearances that he made on board.

Now, listening to Ferragut’s jovial comments on his mate’s tranquil life and philosophic sagacity, Toni again ejaculated mentally, without the captain’s suspecting anything from his impassive countenance: “Now he has quarreled with the woman. He has tired of her. But better so!”

He was more than ever confirmed in this belief on hearing Ferragut’s plans. As soon as the boat could be made ready, they were going to anchor in the commercial port. He had been told of a certain cargo for Barcelona,–some cheap freight,–but that was better than going empty…. If the cargo should be delayed, they would set sail merely with ballast. More than anything else, he wished to renew his trips. Boats were scarcer and more in demand all the time. It was high time to stop this enforced inertia.

“Yes, it’s high time,” responded Toni who, during the entire month, had only gone ashore twice.

The _Mare Nostrum_ left the repair dock coming to anchor opposite the commercial wharf, shining and rejuvenated, with no imperfections recalling her recent injuries.

One morning when the captain and his second were in the saloon under the poop undecided whether to start that night–or wait four days longer, as the owners of the cargo were requesting,–the third officer, a young Andalusian, presented himself greatly excited by the piece of news of which he was the bearer. A most beautiful and elegant lady (the young man emphasized his admiration with these details) had just arrived in a launch and, without asking permission, had climbed the ladder, entering the vessel as though it were her own dwelling.

Toni felt his heart thump. His swarthy countenance became ashy pale. “_Cristo!_… The woman from Naples!” He did not really know whether she was from Naples; he had never seen her, but he was certain that she was coming as a fatal impediment, as an unexpected calamity…. Just when things were going so well, too!…

The captain whirled around in his arm chair, jumped up from the table, and in two bounds was out on deck.

Something extraordinary was perturbing the crew. They, too, were all on deck as though some powerful attraction had drawn them from the orlop, from the depths of the hold, from the metallic corridors of the engine rooms. Even Uncle Caragol was sticking his episcopal face out through the door of the kitchen, holding a hand closed in the form of a telescope to one of his eyes, without being able to distinguish clearly the announced marvel.

Freya was a few steps away in a blue suit somewhat like a sailor’s, as though this visit to the ship necessitated the imitative elegance and bearing of the multi-millionaires who live on their yachts. The seamen, cleaning brass or polishing wood, were pretending extraordinary occupations in order to get near her. They felt the necessity of being in her atmosphere, of living in the perfumed air that enveloped her, following her steps.

Upon seeing the captain, she simply extended her hand, as though she might have seen him the day before.

“Do not object, Ferragut!… As I did not find you in the hotel, I felt obliged to visit you on your ship. I have always wanted to see your floating home. Everything about you interests me.”

She appeared an entirely different woman. Ulysses noted the great change that had taken place in her person during the last days. Her eyes were bold, challenging, of a calm seductiveness. She appeared to be surrendering herself entirely. Her smiles, her words, her manner of crossing the deck toward the staterooms of the vessel proclaimed her determination to end her long resistance as quickly as possible, yielding to the sailor’s desires.

In spite of former failures, he felt anew the joy of triumph. “Now it is going to be! My absence has conquered her….” And at the same time that he was foretasting the sweet satisfaction of love and triumphant pride, there arose in him a vague instinct of suspicion of this woman so suddenly transformed, perhaps loving her less than in former days when she resisted and advised him to be gone.

In the forward cabin he presented her to his mate. The crude Toni experienced the same hallucination that had perturbed all the others on the boat. What a woman!… At the very first glance he understood and excused the captain’s conduct. Then he fixed his eyes upon her with an expression of alarm, as though her presence made him tremble for the fate of the steamer: but finally he succumbed, dominated by this lady who was examining the saloon as though she had come to remain in it forever.

For a few moments Freya was interested in the hairy ugliness of Toni. He was a true Mediterranean, just the kind she had imagined to herself,–a faun pursuing nymphs. Ulysses laughed at the eulogies which she passed on his mate.

“In his shoes,” she continued, “he ought to have pretty little hoofs like a goat’s. He must know how to play the flute. Don’t you think so, Captain?…”

The faun, wrinkled and wrathful, took himself off, saluting her stolidly as he went away. Ferragut felt greatly relieved at his absence, since he was fearful of some rude speech from Toni.

Finding herself alone with Ulysses, she ran through the great room from one side to the other.

“Is here where you live, my dear shark?… Let me see everything. Let me poke around everywhere. Everything of yours interests me. You will not say now that I do not love you. What a boast for Captain Ferragut! The ladies come to seek him on his ship….”

She interrupted her ironic and affectionate chatter in order to defend herself gently from the sailor. He, forgetting the past, and wishing to take advantage of the happiness so suddenly presented to him, was kissing the nape of her neck.

“There,… there!” she sighed. “Now let me look around. I feel the curiosity of a child.”

She opened the piano,–the poor piano of the Scotch captain–and some thin and plaintive chords, showing many years’ lack of tuning, filled the saloon with the melancholy of resuscitated memories.

The melody was like that of the musical boxes that we find forgotten in the depths of a wardrobe among the clothes of some deceased old lady. Freya declared that it smelled of withered roses.

Then, leaving the piano, she opened one after the other, all the doors of the staterooms surrounding the saloon. She stopped at the captain’s sleeping room without wishing to pass the threshold, without loosening her hold on the brass doorknob in her right hand. Ferragut behind her, was pushing her with treacherous gentleness, at the same time repeating his caresses on her neck.

“No; here, no,” she said. “Not for anything in the world!… I will be yours, I promise you; I give you my word of honor. But where I will and when it seems best to me…. Very soon, Ulysses!”

He felt complete gratification in all these affirmations made in a caressing and submissive voice, all possible pride in such spontaneous, affectionate address, equivalent to the first surrender.

The arrival of one of Uncle Caragol’s acolytes made them recover their composure. He was bringing two enormous glasses filled with a ruddy and foamy cocktail,–an intoxicating and sweet mixture, a composite of all the knowledge acquired by the _chef_ in his intercourse with the drunkards of the principal ports of the world.

She tested the liquid, rolling up her eyes like a greedy tabby. Then she broke forth into praises, lifting up the glass in a solemn manner. She was offering her libation to Eros, the god of Love, the most beautiful of the gods, and Ferragut who always had a certain terror of the infernal and agreeable concoctions of his cook, gulped the glass in one swallow, in order to join in the invocation.

All was arranged between the two. She was giving the orders. Ferragut would return ashore, lodging in the same _albergo_. They would continue their life as before, as though nothing had occurred.

“This evening you will await me in the gardens of the _Villa Nazionale_…. Yes, there where you wished to kill me, you highwayman!…”

Before he should clearly recall that night of violence, Freya continued her recollections with feminine astuteness…. It was Ulysses who had wanted to kill her; she reiterated it without admitting any reply.

“We shall visit the doctor,” she continued. “The poor woman wants to see you and has asked me to bring you. She is very much interested in you because she knows that I love you, my pirate!”

After having arranged the hour of meeting, Freya wished to depart. But before returning to her launch, she felt curious to inspect the boat, just as she Had examined the saloon and the staterooms.

With the air of a reigning princess, preceded by the captain and followed by the officials, she went over the two decks, entered the galleries of the engine room and the four-sided abyss of the hatchways, sniffing the musty odor of the hold. On the bridge she touched with childish enthusiasm the large brass hood of the binnacle and other steering instruments glistening as though made of gold.

She wished to see the galley and invaded Uncle Caragol’s dominions, putting his formal lines of casseroles into lamentable disorder, and poking the tip of her rosy little nose into the steam arising from the great stew in which was boiling the crew’s mess.

The old man was able to see her close with his half-blind eyes. “Yes, indeed, she was pretty!” The frou-frou of her skirts and the frequent little clashes that he had with her in her comings and goings, perturbed the apostle. His _chef_-like, sense of smell made him feel annoyed by the perfume of this lady. “Pretty, but with the smell of …” he repeated mentally. For him all feminine perfume merited this scandalous title. Good women smelled of fish and kitchen pots; he was sure of that…. In his faraway youth, the knowledge of poor Caragol had never gone beyond that.

As soon as he was alone, he snatched up a rag, waving it violently around, as though he were driving away flies. He wished to clear the atmosphere of bad odors. He felt as scandalized as though she had let a cake of soap fall into one of his delicious rice compounds.

The men of the crew crowded to the railings in order to follow the course of the little launch that was making toward shore.

Toni, standing on the bridge, also contemplated her with enigmatic eyes.

“You are handsome, but may the sea swallow you up before you come back!”

A handkerchief was waving from the stern of the little boat. “Good-by, Captain!” And the captain nodded his head, smiling and gratified by the feminine greeting while the sailors were envying him his good luck.

Again one of the men of the crew carried Ferragut’s baggage to the _albergo_ on the shore of _S. Lucia_. The porter, as though foreseeing the chance of getting an easy fee from his client, took it upon himself to select a room for him, an apartment on a floor lower than on his former stay, near that which the _signora_ Talberg was occupying.

They met in mid-afternoon in the _Villa Nazionale_, and began their walk together through the streets of Chiaja. At last Ulysses was going to know where the doctor was hiding her majestic personality. He anticipated something extraordinary in this dwelling-place, but was disposed to hide his impressions for fear of losing the affection and support of the wise lady who seemed to be exercising so great a power over Freya.

They entered into the vestibule of an ancient palace. Many times the sailor had stopped before this door, but had gone on, misled by the little metal door plates announcing the offices and counting-houses installed on the different floors.

He beheld an arcaded court paved with great tiled slabs upon which opened the curving balconies of the four interior sides of the palace. They climbed up a stairway of resounding echoes, as large as one of the hill-side streets, with broad turnings which in former time permitted the passage of the litters and chairmen. As souvenirs of the white-wigged personages and ladies of voluminous farthingales who had passed through this palace, there were still some classic busts on the landing places, a hand-wrought iron railing, and various huge lanterns of dull gold and blurred glass.

They stopped on the first floor before a row of doors rather weather-beaten by the years.

“Here it is,” said Freya.

And thereupon she pointed to the only door that was covered with a screen of green leather displaying a commercial sign,–enormous, gilded and pretentious. The doctor was lodging in an office…. How could he ever have found it!

The first room really was an office, a merchant’s room with files for papers, maps, a safe for stocks, and various tables. One employee only was working here,–a man of uncertain age with a childish face and a clipped beard. His obsequious and smiling attitude was in striking contrast to his evasive glance,–a glance of alarm and distrust.

Upon seeing Freya he arose from his seat. She greeted him, calling him Karl, and passed on as though he were a mere porter. Ulysses upon following her, surmised that the suspicious glance of the writer was fixed upon his back.

“Is he a Pole, too?” he asked.

“Yes, a Pole…. He is a protege of the doctor’s.”

They entered a salon evidently furnished in great haste, with the happy-go-lucky and individual knack of those accustomed to traveling and improvising a dwelling place;–divans with cheap and showy chintzes, skins of the American llama, glaring imitation-Oriental rugs, and on the walls, prints from the periodicals between gilt moldings. On a table were displayed their marble ornaments and silver things, a great dressing-case with a cover of cut leather, and a few little Neapolitan statuettes which had been bought at the last moment in order to give a certain air of sedentary respectability to this room which could be dismantled suddenly and whose most valuable adornments were acquired _en route_.

Through a half-drawn portiere they descried the doctor writing in the nearby room. She was bending over an American desk, but she saw them immediately in a mirror which she kept always in front of her in order to spy on all that was passing behind her.

Ulysses surmised that the imposing dame had made certain additions to her toilette in order to receive him. A gown as close as a sheath molded the exuberance of her figure. The narrow skirt drawn tightly over the edge of her knees appeared like the handle of an enormous club. Over the green sea of her dress she was wearing a spangled white tulle draped like a shawl. The captain, in spite of his respect for this wise lady, could not help comparing her to a well-nourished mother-mermaid in the oceanic pasture lands.

With outstretched hands and a joyous expression on her countenance irradiating even her glasses, she advanced toward Ferragut. Her meeting was almost an embrace…. “My dear Captain! Such a long time since I have seen you!…” She had heard of him frequently through her young friend, but even so, she could not but consider it a misfortune that the sailor had never come to see her.

She appeared to have forgotten her coldness when bidding him farewell in Salerno and the care which she had taken to hide from him her home address.

Neither did Ferragut recall this fact now that he was so agreeably touched by the doctor’s amiability. She had seated herself between the two as though wishing to protect them with all the majesty of her person and the affection of her eyes. She was a real mother for her young friend. While speaking, she was patting Freya’s great locks of hair, which had just escaped from underneath her hat, and Freya, adapting herself to the tenderness of the situation, cuddled down against the doctor, assuming the air of a timid and devoted child while she fixed on Ulysses her eyes of sweet promise.

“You must love her very much, Captain,” continued the matron. “Freya speaks only of you. She has been so unfortunate!… Life has been so cruel to her!…”

The sailor felt as though he were in the placid bosom of a family. That lady was discreetly taking everything for granted, speaking to him as to a son-in-law. Her kindly glance was somewhat melancholy. It was the sweet sadness of mature people who find the present monotonous, the future circumscribed, and taking refuge in memories of the past, envy the young who enjoy the reality of what they can taste only in memory.

“Happy you!… You love each other so much!… Life is worth living only because of love.”

And Freya, as though irresistibly affected by these counsels, threw one arm around the doctor’s globular, corseted figure, while convulsively clasping Ulysses’ right hand.

The gold-rimmed spectacles, with their protecting gleam, appeared to incite them to even greater intimacy. “You may kiss each other….” And the imposing dame, trumping up an insignificant pretext, so as to facilitate their love-making was about to go out when the drapery of the door between the salon and office was raised.

There entered a man of Ferragut’s age, but shorter, with a weather-beaten face. He was dressed in the English style with scrupulous correctness. It was plain to be seen that he was accustomed to take the most excessive and childish interest in everything referring to the adornment of his person. The suit of gray wool appeared to have achieved its finishing touch in the harmony of cravat, socks, and handkerchief sticking out of his pocket,–all in the same tone. The three pieces were blue, without the slightest variation in shade, chosen with the exactitude of a man who would undoubtedly suffer cruel discomfort if obliged to go out into the street with his cravat of one color and his socks of another. His gloves had the same dark tan tone as his shoes.

Ferragut thought that this dandy, in order to be absolutely perfect, ought to be clean shaved. And yet, he was wearing a beard, close clipped on the cheeks and forming over the chin a short, sharp point. The captain suspected that he was a sailor. In the German fleet, in the Russian, in all the navies of the North where they are not shaved in the English style, they use this traditional little beard.

The newcomer bowed, or, more properly speaking, doubled himself over at right angles, with a brusque stiffness, upon kissing the hands of the two ladies. Then he raised his impertinent monocle and fixed it in one of his eyes while the doctor made the introduction.

“Count Kaledine … Captain Ferragut.”

The count gave the sailor his hand, a hard hand, well-cared for and vigorous, which for a long time enclosed that of Ulysses, wishing to dominate it with an ineffectual pressure.

The conversation continued in English which was the language employed by the doctor in her relations with Ulysses.

“The gentleman is a sailor?” asked Ferragut in order to clarify his doubts.

The monocle did not move from its orbit, but a light ripple of surprise appeared to cross its luminous convexity. The doctor hastened to reply.

“The count is an illustrious diplomat who is now on leave, regaining his health. He has traveled a great deal, but he is not a sailor.”

And she continued her explanations.

The Kaledines were of a Russian family ennobled in the days of Catherine the Great. The doctor, being a Polish woman, had been connected with them for many years…. And she ceased speaking, giving Kaledine his cue in the conversation.

At the beginning the count appeared cold and rather disdainful in his words, as though he could not possibly lay aside his diplomatic haughtiness. But this hauteur gradually melted away.

Through his “distinguished friend,–Madame Talberg,” he had heard of many of Ferragut’s nautical adventures. Men of action, the heroes of the ocean, were always exceedingly interesting to him.

Ulysses suddenly noticed in his noble interlocutor a warm affection, a desire to make himself agreeable, just like the doctor’s. What a lovely home this was in which everybody was making an effort to be gracious to Captain Ferragut!

The count, smiling amiably, ceased to avail himself of his English, and soon began talking to him in Spanish, as though he had reserved this final touch in order to captivate Ulysses’ affection with this most irresistible of flatteries.

“I have lived in Mexico,” he said, in order to explain his knowledge of the language. “I made a long trip through the Philippines when I was living in Japan.”

The seas of the extreme Far East were those least frequented by Ulysses. Only twice had he entered the Chinese and Nipponese harbors, but he knew them sufficiently to keep up his end of the conversation with this traveler who was displaying in his tastes a certain artistic refinement. For half an hour, there filed through the vulgar atmosphere of this salon, images of enormous pagodas with superimposed roofs whose strings of bells vibrated in the breeze like an Aeolian harp, monstrous idols–carved in gold, in bronze, or in marble-houses made of paper, thrones of bamboo, furniture with mother-of-pearl inlay, screens with flocks of flying storks.

The doctor disappeared, bored by a dialogue of which she could only understand a few words. Freya, motionless, with drowsy eyes, and a knee between her crossed hands, held herself aloof, understanding the conversation, but without taking any part in it, as though she were offended at the forgetfulness in which the two men were leaving her. Finally she slipped discreetly away, responding to the call of a hand peeping through the portieres. The doctor was preparing tea and needed help.

The conversation continued on in no way affected by their absence. Kaledine had abandoned the Asiatic waters in order to pass to the Mediterranean, and there he anchored himself with admirable insistence. Another sign of affection for Ferragut who was finding him more and more charming in spite of his slightly glacial attitude.

He suddenly noticed that it was not as a Russian count that he was speaking since, with brief and exact questions, he was making Ferragut reply just as though he were undergoing an examination.

These signs of interest shown by the great traveler in the little _mare nostrum_, and especially in the details of its western bowl which he wished to know most minutely, pleased Ferragut greatly.

He might ask him whatever he wished. Ferragut knew mile for mile all its shores,–Spanish, French, and Italian, the surface and also its depths.

Perhaps because he was staying in Naples, Kaledine insisted upon learning especially about that part of the Mediterranean enclosed between Sardinia, southern Italy, and Sicily,–the part which the ancients had called the Tyrrhenian Sea…. Did the captain happen to know those little frequented and almost forgotten islands opposite Sicily?

“I know all about all of them,” replied the sailor boastfully. And without realizing exactly whether it was curiosity on the part of the listener, or whether he was being submitted to an interesting examination, he talked on and on.

He was well acquainted with the archipelago of the Lipari Islands with their mines of sulphur and pumice-stone,–a group of volcanic peaks which rise up from the depths of the Mediterranean. In these the ancients had placed Aeolus, lord of the winds; in these was Stromboli, vomiting forth enormous balls of lava which exploded with the roar of thunder. Its volcanic slag fell again into the chimneys of the crater or rolled down the mountain slopes, falling into the waves.

More to the west, isolated and solitary in a sea free from shoals, was Ustica,–an abrupt and volcanic island that the Phoenicians had colonized and which had served as a refuge for Saracen pilots. Its population was scant and poor. There was nothing to see on it, apart from certain fossil shells interesting to men of science.

But the count showed himself wonderfully interested in this extinct and lonely crater in the midst of a sea frequented only by fishing smacks.

Ferragut had also seen, although far off, at the entrance of the harbor of Trapani, the archipelago of the Aegadian Islands where are the great fishing grounds of the tunny. Once he had disembarked in the island of Pantellaria, situated halfway between Sicily and Africa. It was a very high, volcanic cone that came up in the midst of the strait and had at its base alkaline lakes, sulphurous fumes, thermal waters, and prehistoric constructions of great stone blocks similar to those in Sardinia and the Balearic Islands. Boats bound for Tunis and Tripoli used to carry cargoes of raisins, the only export from this ancient Phoenician colony.

Between Pantellaria and Sicily the ocean floor was considerably elevated, having on its back an aquatic layer that in some points was only twelve yards thick. It was the great shoal called the Aventura, a volcanic swelling, a double submerged island, the submarine pedestal of Sicily.

The ledge of Aventura also appeared to interest the count greatly.

“You certainly know the sea well,” he said in an approving tone.

Ferragut was about to go on talking when the two ladies entered with a tray which contained the tea service and various plates of cakes. The captain saw nothing strange in their lack of servants. The doctor and her friend were to him a pair of women of extraordinary customs, and so he thought all their acts were logical and natural. Freya served the tea with modest grace as though she were the daughter of the house.

They passed the rest of the afternoon conversing on distant voyages. Nobody alluded to the war, nor to Italy’s problem at that moment as to whether she should maintain or break her neutrality. They appeared to be living in an inaccessible place thousands of leagues from all human bustle.

The two women were treating the count with the well-bred familiarity of persons in the same rank of life, but at times the sailor fancied that he noted that they were afraid of him.

At the end of the afternoon this personage arose and Ferragut did the same, understanding that he was expected to bring his visit to an end. The count offered to accompany him. While he was bidding the doctor good-by, thanking her with extreme courtesy for having introduced him to the captain, Ferragut felt that Freya was clasping his hand in a meaning way.

“Until to-night,” she murmured lightly, hardly moving her lips. “I shall see you later…. Expect me.”

Oh, what happiness!… The eyes, the smile, the pressure of her hand were telling him much more than that.

Never did he take such an agreeable stroll as when walking beside Kaledine through the streets of Chiaja toward the shore. What was that man saying?… Insignificant things in order to avoid silence, but to him they appeared to be observations of most profound wisdom. His voice sounded musical and affectionate. Everything about them seemed equally agreeable,–the people who were passing through the streets, the Neapolitan sounds at nightfall, the dark seas, the entire life.

They bade each other good-by before the door of the hotel. The count, in spite of his offers of friendship, went away without mentioning his address.

“It doesn’t matter,” thought Ferragut. “We shall meet again in the doctor’s house.”

He passed the rest of his watch agitated alternately by hope and impatience. He did not wish to eat; emotion had paralyzed his appetite…. And yet, once seated at the table, he ate more than ever with a mechanical and distraught avidity.

He needed to stroll around, to talk with somebody, in order that time might fly by with greater rapidity, beguiling his uneasy wait. She would not return to the hotel until very late…. And he therefore retired to his room earlier than usual, believing with illogical superstition that by so doing Freya might arrive earlier.

His first movement upon finding himself alone in his room, was one of pride. He looked up at the ceiling, pitying the enamored sailor that a week before had been dwelling on the floor above. Poor man! How they must have made fun of him!… Ulysses admired himself as though he were an entirely new personality, happy and triumphant, completely separated from that other creature by dolorous periods of humiliations and failures that he did not wish to recall.

The long, long hours in which he waited with such anxiety!… He strolled about smoking, lighting one cigar with the remnant of the preceding one. Then he opened the window, wishing to get rid of the perfume of strong tobacco. She only liked Oriental cigarettes…. And as the acrid odor of the strong, succulent Havana cigar persisted in the room, he searched in his dressing-case and sprinkled around the contents of various perfumed essences which he had long ago forgotten.

A sudden uneasiness disturbed his waiting. Perhaps she who was going to come did not know which was his room. He was not sure that he had given her the directions with sufficient clearness. It was possible that she might make a mistake…. He began to believe that really she had made a mistake.

Fear and impatience made him open his door, taking his stand in the corridor in order to look down toward Freya’s closed room. Every time that footsteps sounded on the stairway or the grating of the elevator creaked, the bearded sailor trembled with a childish uneasiness. He wanted to hide himself and yet at the same time he wanted to look to see if she was the one who was coming.

The guests occupying the same floor kept seeing him withdraw into his room in the most inexplicable attitudes. Sometimes he would remain firmly in the corridor as though, worn out with useless calling, he were looking for the domestics; and at other times they surprised him with his head poking out of the half-open door or hastily withdrawing it. An old Italian count, passing by, gave him a smile of intelligence and comradeship…. He was in the secret! The man was undoubtedly waiting for one of the maids of the hotel.

He ended by settling himself in his room, but leaving his door ajar. The rectangle of bright light that it marked on the floor and wall opposite would guide Freya, showing her the way….

But he was not able to keep up this signal very long. Scantily clad dames in kimonos and gentlemen in pyjamas were slipping discreetly down the passage way in soft, slipper-clad silence, all going in the same direction, and casting wrathful glances toward the lighted doorway.

Finally he had to close the door. He opened a book, but it was impossible to read two paragraphs consecutively. His watch said twelve o’clock.

“She will not come!… She will not come!” he cried in desperation.

A new idea revived his drooping spirits. It was ridiculous that so discreet a person as Freya should venture to come to his room while there was a light under the door. Love needed obscurity and mystery. And besides, this visible hope might attract the notice of some curious person.

He snapped off the electric light and in the darkness found his bed, throwing himself down with an exaggerated noise, in order that nobody might doubt that he had retired for the night. The darkness reanimated his hope.

“She’s going to come…. She will come at any moment.”

Again he arose cautiously, noiselessly, going on tiptoe. He must overcome any possible difficulty at the entrance. He put the door slightly ajar so as to avoid the swinging noise of the door-fastening. A chair in the frame of the doorway easily held it unlatched.

He got up several times more, arranging things to his satisfaction and then threw himself upon the bed, disposed to keep his watch all night, if it was necessary. He did not wish to sleep. No, he ought not to drowse…. And half an hour later he was slumbering profoundly without knowing at what moment he had slid down the soft slopes of sleep.

Suddenly he awoke as if some one had hit his head with a club. His ears were buzzing…. It was the rude impression of one who sleeps without wishing to and feels himself shaken by reviving restlessness. Some moments passed without his taking in the situation. Then he suddenly recalled it all…. Alone! She had not come!… He did not know whether minutes or hours had passed by.

Something besides his uneasiness had brought him back to life. He suspected that in the dark silence some real thing was approaching. A little mouse appeared to be moving down the corridor. The shoes placed outside one of the doors were moved with a slight creaking. Ferragut had the vague impression of air that is displaced by the slow advance of a body.

The door trembled. The chair was pushed back, little by little, very gently pushed. In the darkness he descried a moving shadow, dark and dense. He made a movement.

“Shhhh-h!” sighed a ghostly voice, a voice from the other world. “It is I.”

Instinctively he raised his right hand to the wall and turned on the light.

Under the electric light it was she,–a different Freya from any that he had ever seen, with her wealth of hair falling in golden serpents over her shoulders covered with an Asiatic tunic that enveloped her like a cloud.

It was not the Japanese kimono, vulgarized by commerce. It was made in one piece of Hindustanic cloth, embroidered with fantastic flowers and capriciously draped. Through its fine texture could be perceived the flesh as though it were a wrapping of multicolored air.

She uttered a protest. Then, imitating Ulysses’ gesture, she reached her hand toward the wall … and all was darkness.

* * * * *

Upon awakening, he felt the sunlight on his face. The window, whose curtains he had forgotten to draw, was blue,–blue sky above and the blue of the sea in its lower panes.

He looked around him…. Nobody! For a moment he believed he must have been dreaming, but the sweet perfume of her hair still scented the pillow. The reality of awakening was as joyous for Ulysses, as sweet as had been the night hours in the mystery of the darkness. He had never felt so strong and so happy.

In the window sounded a baritone voice singing one of the songs of Naples,–“Oh, sweet land, sweet gulf!…” That certainly was the most beautiful spot in the world. Proud and satisfied with his fate, he would have liked to embrace the waves, the islands, the city, Vesuvius.

A bell jangled impatiently in the corridor. Captain Ferragut was hungry. He surveyed with the glance of an ogre the _cafe au lait_, the abundant bread, and the small pat of butter that the waiter brought him. A very small portion for him!… And while he was attacking all this with avidity, the door opened and Freya, rosy and fresh from a recent bath and clad like a man, entered the room.

The Hindu tunic had been replaced with masculine pyjamas of violet silk. The pantaloons had the edges turned up over a pair of white Turkish slippers into which were tucked her bare feet. Over her heart there was embroidered a design whose letters Ulysses was not able to decipher. Above this device the point of her handkerchief was sticking out of the pocket. Her opulent hair, twisted on top of her head and the voluptuous curves that the silk was taking in certain parts of her masculine attire were the only things that announced the woman.

The captain forgot his breakfast, enthusiastic over this novelty. She was a second Freya,–a page, an adorable, freakish novelty…. But she repelled his caresses, obliging him to seat himself.

She had entered with a questioning expression in her eyes. She was feeling the disquietude of every woman on her second amorous interview. She was trying to guess his impressions, to convince herself of his gratitude, to be certain that the fascinations of the first hours had not been dissipated during her absence.

While the sailor was again attacking his breakfast with the familiarity of a lover who has achieved his ends and no longer needs to hide and poetize his grosser necessities, she seated herself on an old _chaise longue_, lighting a cigarette.

She cuddled into this seat, her crossed legs forming an angle within the circle of one of her arms. Then she leaned her head on her knees, and in this position smoked a long time, with her glance fixed on the sea. He guessed that she was about to say something interesting, something that was puckering her mental interior, struggling to come out.

Finally she spoke with deliberation, without taking her eyes off the gulf. From time to time she would stop this contemplation in order to fasten her eyes on Ulysses, measuring the effect of her words. He stopped occupying himself definitely with the breakfast tray, foreseeing that something very important was coming.

“You have sworn that you will do for me whatever I ask you to do…. You do not wish to lose me forever.”

Ulysses protested. Lose her?… He could not live without her.

“I know your former life; you have told me all about it…. You know nothing about me and you ought to know about me–now that I am really yours.”

The sailor nodded his head; nothing could be more just.

“I have deceived you, Ulysses. I am not Italian.”