alive and
palpitating,--of the infinite copies throughout the world.

Meanwhile the captain, while informing himself of the available dishes,
was secretly following the discreet sign language of the waiter. With
one hand he was holding the door half open, his fingers fumbling with
an enormous archaic bolt on the under side which had belonged to a much
larger door and looked as though it were going to fall from the wood
because of its excessive size.... Ferragut surmised that this bolt was
going to count heavily, with all its weight, in the bill for dinner.

Freya interrupted her contemplation of the panorama on feeling
Ferragut's lips trying to caress her neck.

"None of that, Captain!... You know well enough what we have agreed.
Remember that I have accepted your invitation on the condition that you
leave me in peace."

She permitted his kiss to pass across her cheek, even reaching her
mouth. This caress was already an accepted thing. As it had the force
of custom, she did not resist it, remembering the preceding ones, but
fear of his abusing it made her withdraw from the window.

"Let us examine the enchanted palace which my true love has promised
me," she said gayly in order to distract Ulysses from his insistence.

In the center there was a table made of planks badly planed and with
rough legs. The covers and the dishes would hide this horror. Passing
her eyes scrutinizingly over the old seats, the walls with their loose
papering and the chromos in greenish frames, she spied something dark,
rectangular and deep occupying one corner of the room. She did not know
whether it was a divan, a bed or a funeral catafalque. The shabby
covers that were spread over it reminded one of the beds of the
barracks or of the prison.

"Ah, no!..." Freya made one bound toward the door. She would never be
able to eat beside that filthy piece of furniture which had come from
the scum of Naples. "Ah, no! How loathesome!"

Ulysses was standing near the door, fearing that Freya's discoveries
might go further, and hiding with his back that bolt which was the
waiter's pride. He stammered excuses but she mistook his insistence,
thinking that he was trying to lock her in.

"Captain, let me pass!" she said in an angry voice. "You do not know
me. That kind of thing is for others.... Back, if you do not wish me to
consider you the lowest kind of fellow...."

And she pushed him as she went out, in spite of the fact that Ulysses
was lett