in her Asiatic dwelling.

Ulysses concentrated his attention on the Phantasm's pallid brow
touched by the silky caress of her curls. There he had placed his best
kisses, kisses of tenderness and gratitude.... But the smooth skin that
had appeared made of petals of the camellia was growing dark before his
eyes. It became a dark green and was oozing with blood.... Thus he had
seen her that other time.... And he recalled with remorse his blow in
Barcelona.... Then it opened, forming a deep hole, angular in shape
like a star. Now it was the mark of the gunshot wound, the _coup de
grace_ that brought the death-agony of the executed girl to its end.

Poor Freya, implacable warrior, unnerved by the battle of the sexes!...
She had passed her existence hating men yet needing them in order to
live,--doing them all the harm possible and receiving it from them in
sad reciprocity until finally she had perished at their hands.

It could not end in any other way. A masculine hand had opened the
orifice through which was escaping the last bubble of her existence....
And the horrified captain, poring over her sad profile with its
purpling temple, thought that he never would be able to blot that
ghastly vision from his memory. The phantasm would diminish, becoming
invisible in order to deceive him, but would surely come forth again in
all his hours of pensive solitude; it was going to embitter his nights
on watch, to follow him through the years like remorse.

Fortunately the exactions of real life kept repelling these sad
memories.

"It was a good thing she was shot!" affirmed authoritatively within him
the energetic official accustomed to command men. "What would you have
done in forming a part of the tribunal that condemned her?... Just what
the others did. Think of those who have died through her deviltry!...
Remember what Toni said!"

A letter from his former mate, received in the same mail with the one
from Freya's defender, spoke of the abominations that submarine
aggression was committing in the Mediterranean.

News of some of the crimes was beginning to be received from
shipwrecked sailors who had succeeded in reaching the coast after long
hours of struggle, or when picked up by other boats. The most of the
victims, however, would remain forever unknown in the mystery of the
waves. Torpedoed boats had gone to the bottom with their crews and
passengers, "without leaving any trace," and only months afterwards a
part of th