Only twice had he entered the Chinese and Nipponese harbors, but he knew them sufficiently to keep up his end of the conversation with this traveler who was displaying in his tastes a certain artistic refinement.

For half an hour, there filed through the vulgar atmosphere of this salon, images of enormous pagodas with superimposed roofs whose strings of bells vibrated in the breeze like an Aeolian harp, monstrous idols--carved in gold, in bronze, or in marble-houses made of paper, thrones of bamboo, furniture with mother-of-pearl inlay, screens with flocks of flying storks.
The doctor disappeared, bored by a dialogue of which she could only understand a few words.

Freya, motionless, with drowsy eyes, and a knee between her crossed hands, held herself aloof, understanding the conversation, but without taking any part in it, as though she were offended at the forgetfulness in which the two men were leaving her.
Finally she slipped discreetly away, responding to the call of a hand peeping through the portieres.

The doctor was preparing tea and needed help.
The conversation continued on in no way affected by their absence.
Kaledine had abandoned the Asiatic waters in order to pass to the Mediterranean, and there he anchored himself with admirable insistence.
Another sign of affection for Ferragut who was finding him more and more charming in spite of his slightly glacial attitude.
He suddenly noticed that it was not as a Russian count that he was speaking since, with brief and exact questions, he was making Ferragut reply just as though he were undergoing an examination.
These signs of interest shown by the great traveler in the little _mare nostrum_, and especially in the details of its western bowl which he wished to know most minutely, pleased Ferragut greatly.
He might ask him whatever he wished.

Ferragut knew mile for mile all its shores,--Spanish, French, and Italian, the surface and also its depths.
Perhaps because he was staying in Naples, Kaledine insisted upon learning especially about that part of the Mediterranean enclosed between Sardinia, southern Italy, and Sicily,--the part which the ancients had called the Tyrrhenian Sea....