"I have danced. I have sung; but my successes were always because I was a woman. Men followed after me, desiring the female, and ridiculing the actress. Besides—the life behind the scenes!… A white-slave market with a name on the play-bills…. What exploitation!…"
The desire of freeing herself from all this had led her to make friends with the doctor, accepting her propositions. It seemed to her more honorable to serve a great nation, to be a secret functionary, laboring in the shadow for its grandeur. Besides, at the beginning she was fascinated by the novelty of the work, the adventures on risky missions, the proud consideration that with her espionage she was weaving the web of the future, preparing the history of time to come.
Here also she had, from the very first, stumbled upon sexual slavery. Her beauty was an instrument for sounding the depths of consciences, a key for opening secrets; and this servitude had turned out worse than the former ones, on account of its being irremediable,—she had tried to divorce herself from her life of tantalizing tourist and theatrical woman; but whoever enters into the secret service can nevermore go from it. She learns too many things; slowly she gains a comprehension of important mysteries. The agent becomes a slave of her functions; she is confined within them as a prisoner, and with every new act adds a new stone to the wall that is separating her from liberty.
"You know the rest of my life," she continued. "The obligation of obeying the doctor, of seducing men in order to snatch their secrets from them, made me hate them with a deadly aggressiveness…. But you came. You, who are so good and generous! You who sought me with the enthusiastic simplicity of a growing boy, making me turn back a page in my life, as though I were still only in my teens and being courted for the first time!… Besides, you are not a selfish person. You gave with noble enthusiasm. I believe that if we had known each other in our early youth you would never have deserted me in order to make yourself rich by marrying some one else. I resisted you at first, because I loved you and did not wish to do you harm…. Afterwards, the mandates of my superiors and my passion made me forget these scruples…. I gave myself up. I was the 'fatal woman,' as always; I brought you misfortune…. Ulysses! My love!… Let us forget; there is no use in remembering the past. I know your heart so well, and finding myself in danger, I appeal to it. Save me! Take me with you!…"
As she was standing opposite him, she had only to raise her hands in order to put them on his shoulders, starting the beginning of an embrace.
Ferragut remained insensible to the caress. His immobility repelled these pleadings. Freya had traveled much through the world, had gone through shameful adventures, and would know how to free herself by her own efforts without the necessity of complicating him again in her net. The story that she had just told was nothing to him but a web of misrepresentations.
"It is all false," he said in a heavy voice. "I do not believe you. I never shall believe you…. Each time that we meet you tell me a new tale…. Who are you?… When do you tell the truth,—all the truth at once?… You fraud!"
Insensible to his insults, she continued speaking anxiously of her future, as though perceiving the mysterious dangers which were surrounding her.
"Where shall I go if you abandon me?… If I remain in Spain, I continue under the doctor's domination. I cannot return to the empires where my life has been passed; all the roads are closed and in those lands my slavery would be reborn…. Neither can I go to France or to England; I am afraid of my past. Any one of my former achievements would be enough to make them shoot me: I deserve nothing less. Besides, the vengeance of my own people fills me with terror. I know the methods of the 'service,' when they find it necessary to rid themselves of an inconvenient agent who is in the enemy's territory. The 'service' itself denounces him, voluntarily making a stupid move in order that some documents may go astray, sending a compromising card with a false address in order that it may fall into the hands of the authorities of the country. What shall I do if you do not aid me?… Where can I flee?…"
Ulysses decided to reply, moved to pity by her desperation. The world was large. She could go and live in the republics of America.