On awakening, he remembered that he’d touched her the evening before, when both of them were standing between the farmers’ benches, and the serving girl was setting up the little table beside the kitchen door. At that moment when he’d shivered, he was pressed so closely against her, her chest was touching the length of his arm. And as she was breathing in, perhaps (he thought wildly) her breast was touching me. He imagined her breast, warm, naked, sensitive, in the shadow of her corset. After that, there was no way in the world he could talk to her.

But while they were harnessing the horses, he came up to her abruptly and said, “I could tell it was you last night, you’ll never be able to disguise yourself; you—” He stopped himself. She’s gone very pale. She’s going to fall down. She’s no longer breathing. He sees her eyes. They’re the color of tobacco, with green highlights. But she closes them and says, in a hushed voice, “You too, you disguise yourself poorly.” And the gravity of her voice is so hard to bear, that he answers immediately, he almost shouts, “But I’m not disguised!”

There must have been some misunderstanding. She looked him over from head to foot. Now she was on the verge of smiling: He was so distressed!

“These are the clothes I’m used to,” he said. “I really am a sailor, though it’s been some years since I’ve been to sea. I dressed this way to feel more at ease.” And, since she was smiling, he went on to add, “But what did you find wrong, I mean, badly disguised, about all of this?”

“Your cigars,” she said.

He looked at the one between his fingers, which was still smoking.

“They’re little Pireïrras,” she said, “from the Compania di Charutos. I know them. My husband used to smoke them, back when he imitated everything my brother did. They’re not sailors’ cigars.”

“It’s true,” said Herman. “But sailors do smoke them in the parts of the world where they’re made. That’s where I picked up the habit.”

“So you really are a sailor?” There was still a note of anxiety in her voice.

“I really am one, and I can tell you my name, to clear up any doubt.”

She agreed, with a nod.

“My name is Melville. Herman Melville.”

She considered the name for a moment in silence, and then she asked if he was the writer from America. He said yes. Her smile now became genuine; a bloom came over her lips, and her expression relaxed.

“Did that put you more at ease?”

“Could you tell that I wasn’t?”

“You were pale and out of breath, and I thought you were going to faint.”

“Even so, I felt like I was putting on a brave front,” she said, as if talking to herself.

Indeed, she looked like she was drawing on all of her shaken resources, passionately, honestly, and without an ulterior motive.

“What are you afraid of?” he said.