speaking to you seriously,--with all the frankness that wine gives. I
ought not to tell you so, but I admit it.... If I should ever love a
man, that man would be you."

Ferragut instantly forgot all his irritation in order to listen to her
and envelop her in the adoring light of his eyes. Freya averted her
glance while speaking, not wishing to meet his eye, as though she were
weighing what she was saying while her glance wandered over the
widespread landscape.

Ulysses' origin was what interested her most. She who had traveled over
almost the entire world, had trodden the soil of Spain only a few
hours, when disembarking in Barcelona from the transatlantic liner
which he had commanded. The Spaniards inspired her both with fear and
attraction. A noble gravity reposed in the depths of their ardent
hyperbole.

"You are an exaggerated being, a meridional who enlarges everything and
lies about everything, believing all his own lies. But I am sure that
if you should ever be really in love with me, without fine phrases or
passionate fictions, your affection would be more sane and deep than
that of other men.... My friend, the doctor, says that you are a crude
people and that you have only simulated the nervousness, unbalanced
behavior, and intrigues that accompany love in other civilized
countries even to refinement."

Freya looked at the sailor, making a long pause.

"Therefore you strike," she continued, "therefore you kill when you
feel love and jealousy. You are brutes but not mediocre. You do not
abandon a woman intentionally; you do not exploit her.... You are a new
species of man for me, who has known so many. If I were able to believe
in love, I would have you at my side all my life.... All my life long!"

A light, gentle music, like the vibration of fragile and delicate
crystal, spread itself over the terrace. Freya followed its rhythm with
a light motion of the head. She was accustomed to this cloying music,
this _Serenata_ of Toselli,--a passionate lament that always touches
the soul of the tourist in the halls of the grand hotels. She, who at
other times had ridiculed this artificial and refined little music, now
felt tears welling up in her eyes.

"Not to be able to love anybody!" she murmured. "To wander alone
through the world!... And love is such a beautiful thing!"

She guessed what Ferragut was going to say,--his protest of eternal
passion, his offer to unite his life to hers forever, and she cut his