In Ulysses' room might be seen ribbons, skeins of silk, an old fan--all deposited in books and papers by the same mysterious reflex that had drawn his portraits from his mother's to his cousin's room.
The sailor now liked to remain at home passing long hours meditating with his elbows on the table, but at the same time attentive to the rustling of light steps that could be heard from time to time in the near-by hallway.

He knew about everything,--spherical and rectangular trigonometry, cosmography, the laws of the winds and the tempest, the latest oceanographic discoveries--but who could teach him the approved form of addressing a maiden without frightening her ?...

Where the deuce could a body learn the art of proposing to a shy girl ?...
For him, doubts were never very long nor painful affairs.

Forward march! Let every one get out of such matters as best he could.

And one evening when Cinta was going from the parlor to her aunt's bedroom in order to bring her a devotional book, she collided with Ulysses in the passageway.
If she had not known him, she might have trembled for her existence.
She felt herself grasped by a pair of powerful hands that lifted her up from the floor.