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.