emplated this patriotic warrior very deliberately. He had
the face of a kindly person with clear eyes and grayish, pointed beard.
He almost inspired a tender compassion by his overwhelming duties as a
father.

Meanwhile the doctor's voice was chanting the glories of her relative.

"A hero!... Our gracious Kaiser has decorated him with the Iron Cross.
They have given him honorary citizenship in various capitals.... May
God punish England!"

And she extolled this patriarch's unheard-of exploit. He was the
commandant of the submarine that had torpedoed one of the greatest
English transatlantic steamers. Out of the twelve hundred passengers
from New York more than eight hundred were drowned.... Women and
children had gone down in the general destruction.

Freya, more quick-witted than the doctor, read Ulysses' thoughts in his
eyes.... He was now surveying with astonishment the photograph of this
official surrounded with his biblical progeny, like a good-natured
burgher. And a man who appeared so complacent had committed such
butchery without encountering any danger whatever!--hidden in the water
with his eye glued to the periscope, he had coldly ordered the sending
of a torpedo against this floating and defenseless city?...

"Such is war," said Freya.

"Of course it is war!" retorted the doctor as if offended at the
propitiatory tone of her friend. "And it is our right also. They
blockade us, and they wish our women and children to die of hunger, and
so we kill theirs."

The captain felt obliged to protest, in spite of the hidden nudges and
gestures of his mistress. The doctor had many times told him that,
thanks to her organization, Germany could never know hunger, and that
she could exist years and years on the consumption of her own product.

"That is so," replied the dame, "but war has to make itself ferocious,
implacable, in order that it may not last so long. It is our human duty
to terrify the enemy with a cruelty beyond what they are able to
imagine."

The sailor slept badly that night, evidently greatly troubled. Freya
guessed the presence of something beyond the influence of her caresses.
The following day his pensive reserve continued and she, well knowing
the cause, tried to dissipate it with her words....

The torpedoing of defenseless steamers was only made on the coast of
England. They had to cut short, cost what it might, the source of
supplies for that hated island.

"In the Mediterranean noth