gement of the lemons that were adorning
his stand. She could not see his face, but she guessed, nevertheless,
that he was muttering a bad word,--the most terrible that can be said
of a woman.

They went slowly toward the station of the funicular road, through
solitary streets and between garden walls one side of which was yellow
in the golden sunlight and the other blue in the shade. She it was who
sought Ulysses' arm, supporting herself on it with a childish abandon
as if fatigue had overcome her after the first few steps.

Ferragut pressed this arm close against his body, feeling at once the
stimulus of contact. Nobody could see them; their footsteps resounded
on the pavements with the echo of an abandoned place. The fermented
ardor of those libations to the gods was giving the captain a new
audacity.

"My poor little darling!... Dear little crazy-head!..." he murmured,
drawing closer to him Freya's head which was resting on one of his
shoulders.

He kissed her without her making any resistance. And she in turn kissed
him, but with a sad, light, faint-hearted kiss that in no way recalled
the hysterical caress of the Aquarium. Her voice, which appeared to be
coming from afar off, was repeating what she had counseled him in the
_trattoria_.

"Begone, Ulysses! Do not see me any more. I tell you this for your own
good.... I bring trouble. I should be sorry to have you curse the
moment in which you met me."

The sailor took advantage of all the windings of the streets in order
to cut these recommendations short with his kisses. She advanced limply
as though towed by him with no will power of her own, as though she
were walking in her sleep. A voice was singing with diabolic
satisfaction in the captain's brain:

"Now it is ripe!... Now it is ripe!..."

And he continued pulling her along always in a direct line, not knowing
whither he was going, but sure of his triumph.

Near the station an old man approached the pair,--a white-haired,
respectable gentleman with an old jacket and spectacles. He gave them
the card of a hotel which he owned in the neighborhood, boasting of the
good qualities of its rooms. "Every modern comfort.... Hot water."
Ferragut spoke to her familiarly:

"Would you like?... Would you like?..."

She appeared to wake up, dropping his arm brusquely.

"Don't be crazy, Ulysses.... That will never be.... Never!"

And drawing herself up magnificently, she entered the station with a
haughty ste