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.