Cinta finished speaking in a discouraged and gloomy tone.  She was exhausted.  Her wrath faded out, consumed by its own violence.  Her sobs cut short her words.  Her husband would never again be the same man to her; the body of their son was always interposing between the two.

“I shall never be able to love you....  What have you done, Ulysses?  What have you done that I should have such a horror of you?...  When I am alone I weep:  my sadness is great, but I admit my sorrow with resignation, as a thing inevitable....  As soon as I hear your footsteps, the truth springs forth.  I realize that my son has died because of you, that he would still be living had he not gone in search of you, trying to make you realize that you were a father and what you owe to us....  And when I think of that I hate you, I hate you!...  You have murdered my son!  My only consolation is in the belief that if you have any conscience you will suffer even more than I.”

Ferragut came out from this horrible scene with the conviction that he would have to go away.  That home was no longer his, neither was his wife his.  The reminder of death filled everything, intervening between him and Cinta, pushing him away, forcing him again on the sea.  His vessel was the only refuge for the rest of his life, and he must resort to it like the great criminals of other centuries who had taken refuge in the isolation of monasteries.

He needed to vent his wrath on somebody, to find some responsible person whom he might blame for his misfortunes.  Cinta had revealed herself to him as an entirely new being.  He would never have suspected such energy of character, such passionate vehemence, in his sweet, obedient, little wife.  She must have some counselor who was encouraging her complaints and making her speak badly of her husband.

And he fixed upon Don Pedro, the professor, because there was still deep within him a certain dislike of the man since the days of his courtship.  Besides, it offended him to see him in his home with a certain air of a noble personage whose virtue served as foil for the sins and shortcomings of the master of the house.

The professor evidently considered Ferragut on a level with all the famous Don Juans,—­liberal and care-free when in far-away homes, punctilious and suspiciously correct in his own.

“That old blatherskite!” said Ulysses to himself, “is in love with Cinta.  It is a platonic passion:  with him, it couldn’t be anything else.  But it annoys me greatly....  I’m going to say a few things to him.”

Don Pedro, who was continuing his daily visits in order to console the mother, speaking of poor Esteban as though he were his own son, and casting servile smiles upon the captain, found himself intercepted by him one afternoon, on the landing of the stairway.

The sailor aged suddenly while talking, and his features were accented with a vigorous ugliness.  At that moment he looked exactly like his uncle, the Triton.