ou! who have robbed me of the only
thing that I had!..."

Her imagination invented the most improbable reasons for explaining to
herself this unjust loss.

"God wished to punish you for your bad life and has therefore killed
Esteban, and is slowly killing me.... When I learned of his death I
wished to throw myself off the balcony. I am still living because I am
a Christian, but what an existence awaits me! What a life for you if
you are really a father!... Think that your son might still be existing
if you had not remained in Naples."

Ferragut was a pitiful object. He hung his head without strength to
repeat the confused and lying protests with which he had received his
wife's first words.

"If she knew all the truth!" the voice of remorse kept saying in his
brain.

He was thinking with horror of what Cinta could say if she knew the
magnitude of his sin. Fortunately she was ignorant of the fact that he
had been of assistance to the assassins of their son.... And the
conviction that she never would know it made him admit her words with
silent humility,--the humility of the criminal who hears himself
accused of an offense by a judge ignorant of a still greater offense.

Cinta finished speaking in a discouraged and gloomy tone. She was
exhausted. Her wrath faded out, consumed by its own violence. Her sobs
cut short her words. Her husband would never again be the same man to
her; the body of their son was always interposing between the two.

"I shall never be able to love you.... What have you done, Ulysses?
What have you done that I should have such a horror of you?... When I
am alone I weep: my sadness is great, but I admit my sorrow with
resignation, as a thing inevitable.... As soon as I hear your
footsteps, the truth springs forth. I realize that my son has died
because of you, that he would still be living had he not gone in search
of you, trying to make you realize that you were a father and what you
owe to us.... And when I think of that I hate you, I _hate you_!... You
have murdered my son! My only consolation is in the belief that if you
have any conscience you will suffer even more than I."

Ferragut came out from this horrible scene with the conviction that he
would have to go away. That home was no longer his, neither was his
wife his. The reminder of death filled everything, intervening between
him and Cinta, pushing him away, forcing him again on the sea. His
vessel was the only refuge for the rest