ey nor
treason, but crazed by a woman. Who has not something like this in his
own history?... "Ah, the women!" repeated the Frenchman, as though
lamenting the most terrible form of enslavement.... But the victim had
already suffered enough in the loss of his son. Besides, they owed to
him the discovery and arrest of an important spy.

"Your hand, Captain," he concluded, holding out his own. "All that we
have said will be just between ourselves. It is a sacred, confessional
secret. I will arrange it with the Council of War.... You may continue
lending your services to our cause."

And Ferragut was not annoyed further about the affair of Marseilles.
Perhaps they were watching him discreetly and keeping sight of him in
order to convince themselves of his entire innocence; but this
suspected vigilance never made itself felt nor occasioned him any
trouble.

On the third trip to Salonica the French captain saw him once at a
distance, greeting him with a grave smile which showed that he no
longer was thinking of him as a possible spy.

Upon its return, the _Mare Nostrum_ anchored at Barcelona to take on
cloth for the army service, and other industrial articles of which the
troops of the Orient stood in need. Ferragut did not make this trip for
mercantile reasons. An affectionate interest was drawing him there....
He needed to see Cinta, feeling that in his soul the past was again
coming to life.

The image of his wife, vivacious and attractive, as in the early years
of their marriage, kept rising before him. It was not a resurrection of
the old love; that would have been impossible.... But his remorse made
him see her, idealized by distance, with all her qualities of a sweet
and modest woman.

He wished to reestablish the cordial relations of other times, to have
all the past pardoned, so that she would no longer look at him with
hatred, believing him responsible for the death of her son.

In reality she was the only woman who had loved him sincerely, as she
was able to love, without violence or passional exaggeration, and with
the tranquillity of a comrade. The other women no longer existed. They
were a troop of shadows that passed through his memory like specters of
visible shape but without color. As for that last one, that Freya whom
bad luck had put in his way--... How the captain hated her! How he
wished to meet her and return a part of the harm she had done him!...

Upon seeing his wife, Ulysses imagined that