Her eyes filled with tears.  She threw herself face downward on the divan, hiding her face in her arms, while a sobbing outburst set all the adorable curves of her back a-tremble.

Touched by her grief, Ulysses at the same time admired Freya’s shrewdness in divining all his thoughts.  The voice of good counsel,—­that prudent voice that always spoke in one-half of his brain whenever the captain found himself in difficult situations,—­had begun to cry out, scandalized at the first revelations made by this woman: 

“Flee, Ferragut!...  Flee!  You are in a bad fix.  Do not agree to any relations with such people.  What have you to do with the country of this adventuress?  Why should you encounter dangers for a cause that is of no importance to you?  What you wanted of her, you already have gotten.  Be an egoist, my son!”

But the voice in his other mental hemisphere, that boasting and idiotic voice which always impelled him to embark on vessels bound to be shipwrecked, to be reckless of danger for the mere pleasure of putting his vigor to the proof, also gave him counsel.  It was a villainous thing to abandon a woman.  Only a coward would do such a thing....  And this German woman appeared to love him so much!...

And with his ardent, meridional exuberance, he embraced her and lifted her up, patting the loosened ringlets on her forehead, petting her like a sick child, and drinking in her tears with interminable kisses.

No; he would not abandon her....  He was more disposed to defend her from all her enemies.  He did not know who her enemies were, but if she needed a man,—­there he was....

In vain his inner monitor reviled him while he was making such offers; he was compromising himself blindly; perhaps this adventure was going to be the most terrible in his history....  But in order to quiet his scruples, the other voice kept crying, “You are a gentleman; and a gentleman does not desert a lady, through fear, a few hours after having won her affection.  Forward, Captain!”

An excuse of cowardly selfishness arose in his thoughts, fabricated from one single piece.  He was a Spaniard, a neutral, in no way involved in the conflict of the Central Powers.  His second had often spoken to him of solidarity of race, of Latin nations, of the necessity of putting an end to militarism, of going to war in order that there might be no more wars....  Mere vaporings of a credulous reader!  He was neither English nor French.  Neither was he German; but the woman he loved was, and he was not going to give her up for any antagonisms in which he was not concerned.

Freya must not weep.  Her lover affirmed repeatedly that he wished to live forever at her side, that he was not thinking of abandoning her because of what she had said:  and he even pledged his word of honor that he would aid her in everything that she might consider possible and worthy of him.

Thus Captain Ulysses Ferragut impetuously decided his destiny.