This supposed treason again aroused his homicidal wrath.  He raised his arm and foot, and was about to strike and crush the kneeling woman.  But her passive humiliation, her complete lack of resistance, stopped him.

“No, Ulysses ... listen to me!”

She tried her utmost to prove her sincerity.  She was afraid of her own people; she could see them now in a new light, and they filled her with horror.  Her manner of looking at things had changed radically.  Her remorse, on thinking of what she had done, was making her a martyr.  Her conscience was beginning to feel the wholesome transformation of repentant women who were formerly great sinners.  How could she wash her soul of her past crimes?...  She had not even the consolation of that patriotic faith, bloody and ferocious though it was, which inflamed the doctor and her assistants.

She had been reflecting a great deal.  For her there were no longer Germans, English, nor French; there only existed men; men with mothers, with wives, with daughters.  And her woman’s soul was horrified at the thought of the combats and the killings.  She hated war.  She had experienced her first remorse upon learning of the death of Ferragut’s son.

“Take me with you,” she urged.  “If you do not take me out of my world I shall not know how to get away from it....  I am poor.  In these last years, the doctor has supported me; I do not know any way of earning my living and I am accustomed to living well.  Poverty inspires me with greater fear than death.  You will be able to maintain me; I will accept of you whatever you wish to give me; I will be your handmaiden.  On a boat they must need the care and well-ordered supervision of a woman....  Life locks its doors against me; I am alone.”

The captain smiled with cruel irony.

“I divine what your smile means.  I know what you wish to say to me....  I can see myself; you believe without doubt that such has been my former life.  No,... no!  You are mistaken.  I have not been that.  There has to be a special predisposition, a certain talent for feigning what I do not feel....  I have tried to sell myself, and I cannot, I cannot avail myself of that.  I embitter the life of men when they do not interest me; I am their adversary.  I hate them and they flee from me.”

But the sailor prolonged his atrociously sinister smile.

“It’s a lie,” he said again, “all a lie.  Make no further effort....  You will not convince me.”

As though suddenly reanimated with new force, she rose to her feet:—­her face on a level with Ferragut’s eyes.  He saw her left temple with the torn skin; the spot caused by the blow extended around one eye, reddened and swollen.  On contemplating his barbarous handiwork, remorse again tormented him.

“Listen, Ulysses; you do not know my true existence.  I have always lied to you; I have eluded all your investigations in our happy days.  I wished to keep my former life a secret ... to forget it.  Now I must tell you the truth, the actual truth, just as though I were going to die.  When you know it, you will be less cruel.”