“What shall I give to my bad little man, in order to make him smile a bit?...  What shall I do in order to make him forget his wrong ideas?...”

Perfumes were her pet fad.  As she herself used to say, it was possible for her to do without eating but never without the richest and most expensive essences.  In that scantily furnished room, like the interior of an army and navy supply store, the cut glass flasks with gold and nickel stoppers, protruded among the clothing and papers, and stood up in the corners denouncing the forgetfulness of their enchanting breath.

“Take it!  Take it!”

And she sprinkled the precious perfumes as though they were water on Ferragut’s hair, over his curled beard, advising the sailor to close his eyes in order not to be blinded by this crazy baptism.

Anointed and fragrant as an Asiatic despot, the strong Ulysses would sometimes revolt against this effeminateness.  At others, he would accept it with the delight of a new pleasure.

Suddenly a window-shutter would seem to swing open in his imagination, and, passing by this luminous square, he would see the melancholy Cinta, his son Esteban, the bridge of his vessel and Toni at the helm.

“Forget!” cried the voice of his evil counselor, blotting out the vision.  “Enjoy the present!...  There is plenty of time to go in search of them.”

And again he would sink himself in his refined and artificial luxurious state with the selfishness of the satrap who, after ordering various cruelties, locks himself in his harem.

The very finest linens, scattered by chance, enveloped his body or served as cushions.  They were her lingerie, stray petals of her beauty, that still kept the warmth and perfume of her body.  If Ferragut needed any object belonging to him, he had to hunt for it through sheaves of skirts, silk petticoats, white negligees, perfumes and portraits, all scattered over the furniture or tossed in the corners.  When Freya, tired of dancing in the center of the salon, was not curling herself up in his arms she took delight in opening a box of sandalwood.  In this she used to keep all her jewels, taking them out again and again with a nervous restlessness, as though she feared they might have evaporated in their enclosure.  Her lover had to listen to the gravest explanations accompanying the display of her treasures.

“Kiss it,” she said, offering him the string of pearls almost always on her neck.

These grains of moonlight splendor were to her little living beings, little creatures that she needed in contact with her skin.  She was impregnated with the essence of all that she wore; she drank their life.

“They have slept upon me so many nights,” she would murmur, contemplating them amorously.  “This light amber tone I have given them with the warmth of my body.”

They were no longer a piece of jewelry, they formed a part of her organism.  They might grow pale and die if they were to pass many days forgotten in the depths of her casket.