“We have to be very courageous....  The doctor, just as you see her, is a heroine....  You laugh, but if you should know her arsenal, perhaps it might strike fear to your heart.  She is a scientist.”

The grave lady had an invincible repugnance for vulgar weapons, and Freya referred freely to a portable medicine case full of anesthetics and poisons.

“Besides this she carries on her person a little bag full of certain powders of her own invention,—­tobacco, red pepper....  Perfect little devils!  Whoever gets them in the eyes is blinded for life.  It is as though she were throwing flames.”

She herself was less complicated in her measures of defense.  She had her revolver, a species of firearms which she managed to keep hidden just as certain insects hide their sting, without knowing certainly when it might be necessary to draw it forth.  And if she could not avail herself of that, she always relied on her hatpin.

“Just look at it!...  With what gusto I could pierce the heart of many a person!...”

And she showed him a kind of hidden poniard, a keen, triangular stiletto of genuine steel, capped by a large glass pearl that served as its hilt.

“Among what kind of people are you living!” murmured the practical voice in Ferragut’s interior.  “What have you mixed yourself up with, my son!” But his tendency to discount danger, not to live like other people, made him find a deep enchantment in this novel-like existence.

The doctor no longer went on excursions, but her visitors were increasing in number.  Sometimes, when Ulysses was starting toward her room, Freya would stop him.

“Don’t go....  They’re having a consultation.”

Upon opening the door of the landing that corresponded to his quarters he saw, on various occasions, the green screened door of the office closing behind many men, all of them of Teutonic aspect, travelers who had just disembarked in Naples with a certain precipitation, neighbors from the city who used to receive orders from the doctor.

She appeared much more preoccupied than usual.  Her eyes would pass over Freya and the sailor as though she did not see them.

“Bad news from Rome,” Ferragut’s companion told him.  “Those accursed mandolin-strummers are getting away from us.”

Ulysses began to feel a certain boredom in these monotonously voluptuous days.  His senses were becoming blunted with so many indulgences mechanically repeated.  Besides, a monstrous debilitation was making him think in self-defense of the tranquil life of the hearth.  He timidly began calculating the time of his seclusion.  How long had he been living with her?...  His confused and crowded memory besought her aid.

“Fifteen days,” replied Freya.

Again he persisted in his calculations, and she affirmed that only three weeks had passed by since his steamer had left Naples.

“I shall have to go,” said Ulysses hesitatingly.  “They will be expecting me in Barcelona; I have no news....  What will become of my vessel?...”