"Ay! How can I succeed in making you believe me?… What oath can I take to convince you that I am telling you the truth?…"
The captain's impassive air gave her to understand that all such extremes would be unavailing. There was no oath that could possibly convince him. Even though she should tell the truth, he would not believe her.
She went on with her story, not wishing to protest against this impassable wall.
"My father also was of Italian origin but was Austrian because of the place of his birth…. Furthermore, the Germanic empires always inspired him with a blind enthusiasm. He was among those who detest their native land, and see all the virtues in the northern people.
"Inventor of marvelous business schemes, financial promoter of colossal enterprises, he had passed his existence besieging the directors of the great banking establishments and having interviews in the lobbies of the government departments. Eternally on the eve of surprising combinations that were bound to bring him dozens of millions, he had always lived in luxurious poverty, going from hotel to hotel—always the best—with his wife and his only daughter.
"You know nothing about such a life, Ulysses; you come from a tranquil and well-to-do family. Your people have never known existence in the Palace Hotels, nor have you known difficulties in meeting the monthly account, managing to have it included with those of the former months with an unlimited credit."
As a child she had seen her mother weeping in their extravagant hotel apartment while the father was talking with the aspect of an inspired person, announcing that the next week he was going to clear a million dollars. The wife, convinced by the eloquence of her remarkable husband, would finally dry her tears, powder her face, and adorn herself with her pearls and her blonde laces of problematic value. Then she would descend to the magnificent hall, filled with perfumes, with the hum of conversation and the discreet wailings of the violins, in order to take tea with her friends in the hotel,—formidable millionaires from the two hemispheres who vaguely suspected the existence of an infirmity known as poverty, but incapable of imagining that it might attack persons of their own world.
Meanwhile the little girl used to play in the hotel garden of the Palace Hotel with other children dressed up and adorned like luxurious and fragile dolls, each one worth many millions.
"From my childhood," continued Freya, "I had been a companion of women who are now celebrated for their riches in New York, Paris, and in London. I have been on familiar terms with great heiresses that are to-day, through their marriages, duchesses and even princesses of the blood royal. Many of them have since passed by me, without recognizing me, and I have said nothing, knowing that the equality of childhood is no more than a vague recollection…."
Thus she had grown into womanhood. A few of her father's casual bargains had permitted them to continue this existence of brilliant and expensive poverty. The promoter had considered such environment indispensable for his future negotiations. Life in the most expensive hotels, an automobile by the month, gowns designed by the greatest modistes for his wife and daughter, summers at the most fashionable resorts, winter-skating in Switzerland,—all these luxuries were for him but a kind of uniform of respectability that kept him in the world of the powerful, permitting him to enter everywhere.