ng places of interest, when they met the sailor.

"I have a very pleasant recollection of you," continued Freya. "I
guessed from the very first instant that our friendship was going to
terminate as it has terminated."

She read a question in his glance.

"I know what you are going to say to me. You wonder that I have made
you wait so long, that I should have made you suffer so with my
caprices.... It was because while I was loving you, at the same time I
wished to separate myself from you. You represented an attraction and a
hindrance. I feared to mix you up in my affairs.... Besides, I need to
be free in order to dedicate myself wholly to the fulfillment of my
mission."

There was another long pause. Freya's eyes were fixed on those of her
lover with scrutinizing tenacity. She wished to sound the depths of his
thoughts, to study the ripeness of her preparation--before risking the
decisive blow. Her examination was satisfactory.

"And now that you know me," she said with painful slowness, "begone!...
You cannot love me. I am a spy, just as you say,--a contemptible
being.... I know that you will not be able to continue loving me after
what I have revealed to you. Take yourself away in your boat, like the
heroes of the legends; we shall not see each other more. All our
intercourse will have been a beautiful dream.... Leave me alone. I am
ignorant of what my own fate may be, but what is more important to me
is your tranquillity."

Her eyes filled with tears. She threw herself face downward on the
divan, hiding her face in her arms, while a sobbing outburst set all
the adorable curves of her back a-tremble.

Touched by her grief, Ulysses at the same time admired Freya's
shrewdness in divining all his thoughts. The voice of good
counsel,--that prudent voice that always spoke in one-half of his brain
whenever the captain found himself in difficult situations,--had begun
to cry out, scandalized at the first revelations made by this woman:

"Flee, Ferragut!... Flee! You are in a bad fix. Do not agree to any
relations with such people. What have you to do with the country of
this adventuress? Why should you encounter dangers for a cause that is
of no importance to you? What you wanted of her, you already have
gotten. Be an egoist, my son!"

But the voice in his other mental hemisphere, that boasting and idiotic
voice which always impelled him to embark on vessels bound to be
shipwrecked, to be reckless of danger for t