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.