rs,
saws, pincers ... that devour their own kind, and absorb everything
around them."

Then she looked at the branch of a tree from which were hanging several
silver threads, sustaining insects with active tentacles.

"I would like to be a spider, an enormous spider, that all men might be
drawn to my web as irresistibly as flies. With what satisfaction would
I crunch them between my claws! How I would fasten my mouth against
their hearts!... And I would suck them.... I would suck them until
there wasn't a drop of blood left, tossing away then their empty
carcasses!..."

Ulysses began to wonder if he had fallen in love with a crazy woman.
His disquietude, his surprise and questioning eyes gradually restored
Freya's serenity.

She passed one hand across her forehead, as though awakening from a
nightmare and wishing to banish remembrance with this gesture. Her
glance became calmer.

"Good-by, Ferragut; do not make me talk any more. You will soon doubt
my reason.... You are doing so already. We shall be friends, just
friends and nothing more. It is useless to think of anything else....
Do not follow me.... We shall see each other.... I shall hunt you
up.... Good-by!... Good-by!"

And although Ferragut felt tempted to follow her, he remained
motionless, seeing her hurry rapidly away, as though fleeing from the
words that she had just let fall before the little temple of the poet.

CHAPTER V

THE AQUARIUM OF NAPLES

In spite of her promise, Freya made no effort to meet the sailor. "We
shall see each other.... I shall hunt you up." But it was Ferragut who
did the hunting, stationing himself around the hotel.

"How crazy I was the other morning!... I wonder what you could have
thought of me!" she said the first time that she spoke to him again.

Not every day did Ulysses have the pleasure of a conversation which
invariably developed from the _Via Partenope_ to Virgil's monument. The
most of the mornings he used to wait in vain opposite the oyster
stands, listening to the musicians who were bombarding the closed
windows of the hotel with their sentimental romances and mandolins.
Freya would not appear.

His impatience usually dragged Ulysses back to the hotel in order to
beg information of the porter. Animated by the hope of a new bill, the
flunkey would go to the telephone and inquire of the servants on the
upper floor. And then with a sad and obsequious smile, as though
lamenting his own words: "The _sig