the good senora, "who would
bother about an old woman like me?... I tell you that he is in love
with Cinta, and it will be good luck for the child to marry a man so
wise, so serious...."

As he listened to his mother's matrimonial schemes, Ulysses began to
wonder which of a professor of rhetoric's bones a sailor might break
without incurring too much responsibility.

One day Cinta was looking all over the house for a dark, worn-out
thimble that she had been using for many years. Suddenly she ceased her
search, blushed and dropped her eyes. Her glance had met an evasive
look on her cousin's face. He had it. In Ulysses' room might be seen
ribbons, skeins of silk, an old fan--all deposited in books and papers
by the same mysterious reflex that had drawn his portraits from his
mother's to his cousin's room.

The sailor now liked to remain at home passing long hours meditating
with his elbows on the table, but at the same time attentive to the
rustling of light steps that could be heard from time to time in the
near-by hallway. He knew about everything,--spherical and rectangular
trigonometry, cosmography, the laws of the winds and the tempest, the
latest oceanographic discoveries--but who could teach him the approved
form of addressing a maiden without frightening her?... Where the deuce
could a body learn the art of proposing to a shy girl?...

For him, doubts were never very long nor painful affairs. Forward
march! Let every one get out of such matters as best he could. And one
evening when Cinta was going from the parlor to her aunt's bedroom in
order to bring her a devotional book, she collided with Ulysses in the
passageway.

If she had not known him, she might have trembled for her existence.
She felt herself grasped by a pair of powerful hands that lifted her up
from the floor. Then an avid mouth stamped upon hers two aggressive
kisses. "Take that and that!"... Ferragut repented on seeing his cousin
trembling against the wall, as pale as death, her eyes filled with
tears.

"I have hurt you. I am a brute ... a brute!"

He almost fell on his knees, imploring her pardon; he clenched his
fists as if he were going to strike himself, punishing himself for his
audacity. But she would not let him continue.... "No, No!..." And while
she was moaning this protest, her arms were forming a ring around
Ulysses' neck. Her head drooped toward his, seeking the shelter of his
shoulder. A little mouth united itself modestly t