Yet he rather relished his enforced happiness, the sensation of false liberty which every enamored person feels after a quarrelsome break.  “Now to live again!...”  He wished to return at once to the ship, but feared a revival of the memories evoked by silence.  It would be better to remain in Naples, to go to the theater, to trust to the luck of some chance encounter just as when he used to come ashore for a few hours.  The next morning he would leave the hotel, with all his baggage, and before sunset he would be sailing the open sea.

He ate outside of the albergo, and he passed the night elbowing women in cabarets where an insipid variety show served as a pretext to disguise the baser object.  The recollection of Freya, fresh-looking and gay, kept rising between him and those painted mouths every time that they smiled upon him, trying to attract his attention.

At one o’clock in the morning he went up the hotel stairway, surprised at seeing a ray of light underneath the door of his room.  He entered....  She was awaiting him—­reading, tranquil and smiling.  Her face, refreshed and retouched with juvenile color, did not show the slightest trace of the morning’s spasmodic outbreak.  She was clad in pyjamas.

Seeing Ulysses enter, she arose with outstretched arms.

“Tell me that you are not still angry with me!...  Tell me that you will forgive me!...  I was very naughty toward you this afternoon, I admit it.”

She was embracing him, rubbing her mouth against his neck with a feline purr.  Before the captain could respond she continued with a childish voice: 

“My shark!  My sea-wolf!—­who has made me wait all these hours!...  Swear to me that you have not been unfaithful!...  I can perceive at once the trace of another woman.”

Sniffing his beard and face, her mouth approached the sailor’s.

“No, you have not been unfaithful....  I still find my own perfume....  Oh, Ulysses!  My hero!...”

She kissed him with that absorbing kiss, which appeared to take all the life from him, obscuring his thoughts and annulling his will-power, making him tremble from head to foot.  All was forgotten,—­offenses, slights, plans of departure....  And, as usual, he fell, conquered by that vampire caress.

In the darkness he heard Freya’s gentle voice.  She was recapitulating what they had not said, but what the two were thinking of at the same time.

“The doctor believes that you ought to remain.  Let your boat go with its hideous old faun, who is nothing but a drawback.  You are to remain here, on land....  You will be able to do us a great favor....  You know you will; you will remain?...  What happiness!”

Ferragut’s destiny was to obey this idolized and dominating voice....  And the following morning Toni saw him approaching the vessel with an air of command which admitted no opposition.  The Mare Nostrum must set forth at once for Barcelona.  He would entrust the command to his mate.  He would join it just as soon as he could finish certain affairs that were detaining him in Naples.