She remained pensive a long time. Twilight was rapidly falling; half the sky was of amber and the other half of a midnight blue in which the first stars were beginning to twinkle. The gulf was drowsing under the leaden coverlet of its water, exhaling a mysterious freshness that was spreading to the mountains and trees. All the landscape appeared to be acquiring the fragility of crystal. The silent air was trembling with exaggerated resonance, repeating the fall of an oar in the boats that, small as flies, were slipping along under the sky arching above the gulf, and prolonging the feminine and invisible voices passing through the groves on the heights.
The waiter went from table to table, distributing candles enclosed in paper shades. The mosquitoes and moths, revived by the twilight, were buzzing around these red and yellow flowers of light.
Her voice was again sounding in the twilight air with the vagueness of one speaking in a dream.
"There is a sacrifice greater than that of life,—the only one that can convince a woman that she is beloved. What does life signify to a man like you?… Your profession puts it in danger every day and I believe you capable of risking your life, when tired of land, for the slightest motive…."
She paused again and then continued.
"Honor is worth more than life for certain men,—respectability, the preservation of the place that they occupy. Only the man that would risk his honor and position for me, who would descend to the lowest depths without losing his will to live, would ever be able to convince me…. That indeed would be a sacrifice!"
Ferragut felt alarmed at such words. What kind of sacrifice was this woman about to propose to him?… But he grew calmer as he listened to her. It was all a fancy of her disordered imagination. "She is crazy," again affirmed the hidden counselor in his brain.
"I have dreamed many times," she continued, "of a man who would rob for me, who would kill if it was necessary and might have to pass the rest of his years in prison…. My poor thief!… I would live only for him, spending night and day near the walls of his prison, looking through the bars, working like a woman of the village in order to send a good dinner to my outlaw…. That is genuine love and not the cold lies, the theatrical vows of our world."
Ulysses repeated his mental comment, "She certainly is crazy"—and his thought was so clearly reflected in his eyes that she guessed it.
"Don't be afraid, Ferragut," she said, smiling. "I have no thought of exacting such a sacrifice of you. All this that I am talking about is merely fancy, a whimsy invented to fill the vacancy of my soul. 'Tis the fault of the wine, of our exaggerated libations,—that to-day have been without water,—to the gods…. Just look!"