her hand. It
could not be the first time that she had had recourse to it.

The sailor's indecision was brief. With a man, he would have taken
possession of the threatening hand, twisting it until he broke it,
without the slightest fear of the revolver. But he had opposite him a
woman ... and this woman was entirely capable of wounding him, and at
the same time placing him in a ridiculous situation.

"Retire, sir!" ordered Freya with a ceremonious and threatening tone as
though she were speaking to an utter stranger.

But it was she who retired finally, seeing that Ulysses stepped back,
thoughtful and confused. She turned her back on him at the same time
that the revolver disappeared from her hand.

Before departing, she murmured some words that Ferragut was not able to
understand, looking at him for the last time with contemptuous eyes.
They must be terrible insults, and just because she was uttering them
in a mysterious language, he felt her scorn more deeply.

"It cannot be.... It is all ended. It is ended forever!..."

She said this repeatedly before returning to her hotel. And he thought
of it during all the wakeful night between agonizing attacks of
nightmare. When the morning was well advanced the bugles of the
_bersaglieri_ awakened him from a heavy sleep.

He paid his bill in the manager's office and gave a last tip to the
porter, telling him that a few hours later a man from the ship would
come for his baggage.

He was happy, with the forced happiness of one obliged to accommodate
himself to circumstances. He congratulated himself upon his liberty as
though he had gained this liberty of his own free will and it had not
been imposed upon him by her scorn. Since the memory of the preceding
day pained him, putting him in a ridiculous and gross light, it was
better not to recall the past.

He stopped in the street to take a last look at the hotel. "Adieu,
accursed _albergo_!... Never will I see you again. Would that you might
burn down with all your occupants!"

Upon treading the deck of the _Mare Nostrum_, his enforced satisfaction
became immeasurably increased. Here only could he live far from the
complications and illusions of terrestrial life.

All those aboard who in previous weeks had feared the arrival of the
ill-humored captain, now smiled as though they saw the sun coming out
after a tempest. He distributed kindly words and affectionate grasps of
the hand. The repairs were going to be finishe