She became terrified upon thinking of the accumulated hatred brought about by this deed, and upon the approaching vengeance.  In Berlin the name of Ferragut was the object of special attention; in every nation of the earth, the civilian battalions of men and women engaged in working for Germany’s triumph were repeating his name at this moment.  The commanders of the submarines were passing along information regarding his ship and his person.  He had dared to attack the greatest empire in the world.  He, one lone man, a simple merchant captain, depriving the kaiser of one of his most valiant, valuable servants!

“What have you done, Ulysses?...  What have you done?” she wailed again.

And Ferragut began to recognize in her voice a genuine interest in his person, a terrible fear of the dangers which she believed were threatening him.

“Here, in your very own country, their vengeance will overtake you.  Flee!  I don’t know where you can go to get rid of them, but believe me....  Flee!”

The sailor came out of his scornful indifference.  Anger was lending a hostile gleam to his glance.  He was furious to think that those foreigners could pursue him in his own country; it was as though they were attacking him beside his own hearth.  National pride augmented his wrath.

“Let them come,” he said.  “I’d like to see them this very day.”

And he looked around, clenching his fists as though these innumerable and unknown enemies were about to come out from the walls.

“They are also beginning to consider me as an enemy,” continued the woman.  “They do not say so, because it is a common thing with us to hide our thoughts; but I suspect the coldness that is surrounding me....  The doctor knows that I love you the same as before, in spite of the wrath that she feels against you.  The others are talking of your ‘treason’ and I protest because I cannot stand such a lie....  Why are you a traitor?...  You are not one of our clan.  You are a father who longs to avenge himself.  We are the real traitors:—­I, who entangled you in the fatal adventure,—­they, who pushed me toward you, in order to take advantage of your services.”

Their life in Naples surged up in her memory and she felt it necessary to explain her acts.

“You have not been able to understand me.  You are ignorant of the truth....  When I met you on the road to Paestum, you were a souvenir of my past, a fragment of my youth, of the time in which I knew the doctor only vaguely, and was not yet compromised in the service of ’information.’...  From the very beginning your love and enthusiasm made an impression upon me.  You represented an interesting diversion with your Spanish gallantry, waiting for me outside the hotel in order to besiege me with your promises and vows.  I was greatly bored during the enforced waiting at Naples.  You also found yourself obliged to wait, and sought in me an agreeable recreation....  One day I came to understand that you truly were interesting me greatly, as no other man had ever interested me....  I suspected that I was going to fall in love with you.”