ing of that kind will ever occur. I can
assure you of that.... The submarines will attack battleships only."

And, as if fearing a reappearance of Ulysses' scruples, she redoubled
her seductions on their afternoons of voluptuous imprisonment. She was
constantly devising new fascinations, that her lover might never be
surfeited. He, on his part, came to believe that he was living with
several women at the same time, like an Oriental personage. Freya upon
multiplying her charms, had to do no more than to swing around on
herself, showing a new facet of her past existence.

The sentiment of jealousy, the bitterness of not having been the first
and only one, rejuvenated the sailor's passion, alleviating the tedium
of satiety, yet at the same time giving to her caresses an acrid,
desperate and attractive relish due to his enforced fraternity with
unknown predecessors.

Desisting from her enchantments, she came and went through the salon,
sure of her beauty, proud of her firm and superb physique, which had
not yielded in the slightest degree to the passing of the years. A
couple of colored shawls served as her transparent clothing. Waving
them as rainbow shafts around her marble-white body, she used to
interpret the priestess dances to the terrible Siva that she had
learned in Java.

Suddenly the chill of the room would begin biting in awaking her from
her tropical dream. With a final bound, she sought refuge in his arms.

"Oh, my beloved Argonaut!... My shark!"

She threw herself on the sailor's breast, stroking his beard, and
pushing him so as to edge in on the divan which was too narrow for the
two.

She guessed at once the cause of his furrowed brow, the listlessness
with which he responded to her caresses, the gloomy fire that was
smouldering in his eyes. The exotic dance had made him recall her past
and in order to regain her sway over him, subjecting him in sweet
passivity, she sprang up from the divan, running about the room.

"What shall I give to my bad little man, in order to make him smile a
bit?... What shall I do in order to make him forget his wrong
ideas?..."

Perfumes were her pet fad. As she herself used to say, it was possible
for her to do without eating but never without the richest and most
expensive essences. In that scantily furnished room, like the interior
of an army and navy supply store, the cut glass flasks with gold and
nickel stoppers, protruded among the clothing and papers, and stood