He had always found the rude heroes of the Odyssey very interesting, but in verse and on paper.

In reality they now seemed to him most dangerous brutes, and he wrote a letter to Cinta telling her that he would suspend his visits until her husband should have returned to sea.
This insult increased the wife's distant bearing.

She resented it as an offense against herself.

After having made her lose her son, Ulysses was terrifying her only friend.
The captain felt obliged to go.

By staying in that hostile atmosphere, which was only sharpening his remorse, he would pile one error upon another.