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.