.. A white-slave market
with a name on the play-bills.... What exploitation!..."

The desire of freeing herself from all this had led her to make friends
with the doctor, accepting her propositions. It seemed to her more
honorable to serve a great nation, to be a secret functionary, laboring
in the shadow for its grandeur. Besides, at the beginning she was
fascinated by the novelty of the work, the adventures on risky
missions, the proud consideration that with her espionage she was
weaving the web of the future, preparing the history of time to come.

Here also she had, from the very first, stumbled upon sexual slavery.
Her beauty was an instrument for sounding the depths of consciences, a
key for opening secrets; and this servitude had turned out worse than
the former ones, on account of its being irremediable,--she had tried
to divorce herself from her life of tantalizing tourist and theatrical
woman; but whoever enters into the secret service can nevermore go from
it. She learns too many things; slowly she gains a comprehension of
important mysteries. The agent becomes a slave of her functions; she is
confined within them as a prisoner, and with every new act adds a new
stone to the wall that is separating her from liberty.

"You know the rest of my life," she continued. "The obligation of
obeying the doctor, of seducing men in order to snatch their secrets
from them, made me hate them with a deadly aggressiveness.... But you
came. You, who are so good and generous! You who sought me with the
enthusiastic simplicity of a growing boy, making me turn back a page in
my life, as though I were still only in my teens and being courted for
the first time!... Besides, you are not a selfish person. You gave with
noble enthusiasm. I believe that if we had known each other in our
early youth you would never have deserted me in order to make yourself
rich by marrying some one else. I resisted you at first, because I
loved you and did not wish to do you harm.... Afterwards, the mandates
of my superiors and my passion made me forget these scruples.... I gave
myself up. I was the 'fatal woman,' as always; I brought you
misfortune.... Ulysses! My love!... Let us forget; there is no use in
remembering the past. I know your heart so well, and finding myself in
danger, I appeal to it. Save me! Take me with you!..."

As she was standing opposite him, she had only to raise her hands in
order to put them on his shoulders, starting the