The captain felt obliged to protest, in spite of the hidden nudges and gestures of his mistress.  The doctor had many times told him that, thanks to her organization, Germany could never know hunger, and that she could exist years and years on the consumption of her own product.

“That is so,” replied the dame, “but war has to make itself ferocious, implacable, in order that it may not last so long.  It is our human duty to terrify the enemy with a cruelty beyond what they are able to imagine.”

The sailor slept badly that night, evidently greatly troubled.  Freya guessed the presence of something beyond the influence of her caresses.  The following day his pensive reserve continued and she, well knowing the cause, tried to dissipate it with her words....

The torpedoing of defenseless steamers was only made on the coast of England.  They had to cut short, cost what it might, the source of supplies for that hated island.

“In the Mediterranean nothing of that kind will ever occur.  I can assure you of that....  The submarines will attack battleships only.”

And, as if fearing a reappearance of Ulysses’ scruples, she redoubled her seductions on their afternoons of voluptuous imprisonment.  She was constantly devising new fascinations, that her lover might never be surfeited.  He, on his part, came to believe that he was living with several women at the same time, like an Oriental personage.  Freya upon multiplying her charms, had to do no more than to swing around on herself, showing a new facet of her past existence.

The sentiment of jealousy, the bitterness of not having been the first and only one, rejuvenated the sailor’s passion, alleviating the tedium of satiety, yet at the same time giving to her caresses an acrid, desperate and attractive relish due to his enforced fraternity with unknown predecessors.

Desisting from her enchantments, she came and went through the salon, sure of her beauty, proud of her firm and superb physique, which had not yielded in the slightest degree to the passing of the years.  A couple of colored shawls served as her transparent clothing.  Waving them as rainbow shafts around her marble-white body, she used to interpret the priestess dances to the terrible Siva that she had learned in Java.

Suddenly the chill of the room would begin biting in awaking her from her tropical dream.  With a final bound, she sought refuge in his arms.

“Oh, my beloved Argonaut!...  My shark!”

She threw herself on the sailor’s breast, stroking his beard, and pushing him so as to edge in on the divan which was too narrow for the two.

She guessed at once the cause of his furrowed brow, the listlessness with which he responded to her caresses, the gloomy fire that was smouldering in his eyes.  The exotic dance had made him recall her past and in order to regain her sway over him, subjecting him in sweet passivity, she sprang up from the divan, running about the room.