like all other
men. Your boat is tied up in the harbor because of an accident; you've
got to remain ashore a month; you meet on one of your trips a woman who
is idiot enough to admit that she remembers meeting you at other times,
and you say to yourself, Magnificent occasion to while away agreeably a
tedious period of waiting!...' If I should yield to your desire, within
a few weeks, as soon as your boat was ready, the hero of my love, the
knight of my dreams, would betake himself to the sea, saying as a
parting salute: 'Adieu, simpleton!'"

Ulysses protested with energy. No: he wished that his boat might never
be repaired. He was computing with agony the days that remained. If it
were necessary, he would abandon it, remaining forever in Naples.

"And what have I to do in Naples?" interrupted Freya. "I am a mere bird
of passage here, just as you are. We knew each other on the seas of
another hemisphere, and we have just happened to run across each other
here in Italy. Next time, if we ever meet again, it will be in Japan or
Canada or the Cape.... Go on your way, you enamored old shark, and let
me go mine. Imagine to yourself that we are two boats that have met
when becalmed, have signaled each other, have exchanged greetings, have
wished each other good luck, and afterwards have continued on our way,
perhaps never to see each other again."

Ferragut shook his head negatively. Such a thing could not be, he could
not resign himself to losing sight of her forever.

"These men!" she continued, each time a little more irritated. "You all
imagine that things must be arranged entirely according to your
caprices. 'Because I desire thee, thou must be mine....' And what if I
don't want to?... And if I don't feel any necessity of being loved?...
If I wish only to live in liberty, with no other love than that which I
feel for myself?..."

She considered it a great misfortune to be a woman. She always envied
men for their independence. They could hold themselves aloof,
abstaining from the passions that waste life, without anybody's coming
to importune them in their retreat. They were at liberty to go wherever
they wanted to, to travel the wide world over, without leaving behind
their footsteps a wake of solicitors.

"You appear to me, Captain, a very charming man. The other day I was
delighted to meet you; it was an apparition from the past; I saw in you
the joy of my youth that is beginning to fade away, and the melancholy
o