eturn as soon
as possible to take up your command.... Do not forget what we are
losing while the boat is tied up."

A few days after the departure of the steamer Ulysses radically changed
his method of living.

Freya no longer wished to continue lodging in the hotel. Attacked by a
sudden modesty, the curiosity and smiles of the tourists and servants
were annoying her. Besides, she wished to enjoy complete liberty in her
love affairs. Her friend, who was like a mother to her, would
facilitate her desire. The two would live in her house.

Ferragut was greatly surprised to discover the extreme size of the
apartment occupied by the doctor. Beyond her salon there was an endless
number of rooms, somewhat dismantled and without furniture, a labyrinth
of partitioned walls and passageways, in which the captain was always
getting lost, and having to appeal to Freya for aid; all the doors of
the stair-landings that appeared unrelated to the green screen of the
office were so many other exits from the same dwelling.

The lovers were lodged in the extreme end, as though living in a
separate house. One of the doors was for them only. They occupied a
grand salon, rich in moldings and gildings and poor in furniture. Three
armchairs, an old divan, a table littered with papers, toilet articles
and eatables, and a rather narrow couch in one of the corners, were all
the conveniences of this new establishment.

In the street it was hot, and yet they were shivering with cold in this
magnificent room into which the sun's rays had never penetrated.
Ulysses attempted to make a fire on a hearth of colored marble, big as
a monument, but he had to desist half-suffocated by the smoke. In order
to reach the doctor's apartment they had to pass through a row of
numberless connecting rooms, long since abandoned.

They lived as newly-wed people, in an amorous solitude, commenting with
childish hilarity on the defects of their quarters and the thousand
little inconveniences of material existence. Freya would prepare
breakfast on a small alcohol stove, defending herself from her lover,
who believed himself more skilled than she in culinary affairs. A
sailor knows something of everything.

The mere suggestion of hunting a servant for their most common needs
irritated the German maiden.

"Never!... Perhaps she might be a spy!"

And the word "spy" on her lips took on an expression of immense scorn.

The doctor was absent on frequent trips and Kar