The momentary suggestion of living in a cottage of Posilipo, completely alone, an existence of monastic isolation with all the conveniences of modern life, was dominating her like an obsession.
"And yet, after all," she continued, "this atmosphere is not favorable to solitude; this landscape is for love. To grow old slowly, two who love each other, before the eternal beauty of the gulf!… What a pity that I have never been really loved!…"
This was an offense against Ulysses who expressed his annoyance with all the aggressiveness that was seething beneath his bad humor. How about him?… Was he not loving her and disposed to prove it to her by all manner of sacrifices?…
Sacrifices as proof of love always left this woman cold, accepting them with a skeptical gesture.
"All men have told me the same thing," she added; "they all promise to kill themselves if I do not love them…. And with the most of them it is nothing more than a phrase of passionate rhetoric. And what if they did kill themselves really? What does that prove?… To leave life on the spur of a moment that gives no opportunity for repentance;—a simple nervous flash, a posture many times assumed simply for what people will say, with the frivolous pride of an actor who likes to pose in graceful attitudes. I know what all that means. A man once killed himself for me…."
On hearing these last words Ferragut jerked himself out of his sullen silence. A malicious voice was chanting in his brain, "Now there are three!…"
"I saw him dying," she continued, "on a bed of the hotel. He had a red spot like a star on the bandage of his forehead,—the hole of the pistol shot. He died clutching my hands, swearing that he loved me and that he had killed himself for me … a tiresome, horrible scene…. And nevertheless I am sure that he was deceiving himself, that he did not love me. He killed himself through wounded vanity on seeing that I would have nothing to do with him,—just for stubbornness, for theatrical effect, influenced by his readings…. He was a Roumanian tenor. That was in Russia…. I have been an actress a part of my life…."
The sailor wished to express the astonishment that the different changes of this mysterious wandering existence, always showing a new facet, were producing in him; but he contained himself in order to listen better to the cruel counsels of the malignant voice speaking within his thoughts…. He was not trying to kill himself for her. Quite the contrary! His moody aggressiveness was considering her as the next victim. There was in his eyes something of the dead Triton when in pursuit of a distant woman's skirt on the coast.
Freya continued speaking.
"To kill one's self is not a proof of love. They all promise me the sacrifice of their existence from the very first words. Men don't know any other song. Don't imitate them, Captain."