Her astuteness was quite accustomed to eluding pursuit, and without Ferragut's knowing exactly how, she slipped away, mingling with the groups near the Plaza of Catalunia.
"I shall not go," was the first thing that Ferragut said on finding himself alone.
He knew just what that invitation signified.

He recalled an infinite number of former unconfessable friendships that he had had in Barcelona,--women that he had met in other times, between voyages, without any passion whatever, but through his vagabond curiosity, anxious for novelty.

Perhaps some one of these had seen him in the Rambla, sending this intermediary in order to renew the old relations.
The captain probably enjoyed the fame of a rich man now that everybody was commenting upon the amazingly good business transacted by the proprietors of ships.
"I shall not go," he again told himself energetically.

He considered it useless to bother about this interview, to encounter the mercenary smile of a familiar but forgotten acquaintance.
But the insistence of the recollection and the very tenacity with which he kept repeating to himself his promise not to keep the tryst, made Ferragut begin to suspect that it might be just as well to go after all.
After luncheon his will-power weakened.

He didn't know what to do with himself during the afternoon.