He was out in the hall again, though hesitating still whether to mount to the first story.  For a while he stood uncertain, clinging with both hands to the wooden post of the balustrade, his head sunk on his hands, and his whole body shivering as in a chill.  Then he raised his head.  His eyes were fixed.  He seemed a different person.

In that moment Frederick comprehended the passionate speech of his body, and sanctioned its demands.  The thing that now came to the fore, despite all the grief that had been gathering in him, despite all his spiritual conflicts, his bitter mental convictions and self-condemnations, despite his repugnance, his horror, his compassion and his hesitating and delaying, the thing that came to the fore was the suppressed, unsatisfied demand of his body.  In the silence of the morning in that strange house, it suddenly assumed an elemental, indomitable force.  It would have overridden the firmest will opposing it.  But Frederick’s will did not oppose it.  His clear, firm intention approved it, strengthened it, and made its power invincible.  He entered Ingigerd’s room.  She was sitting at the open fireplace in a dressing-gown of Petronilla’s purchasing, and was drying the masses of her long, light hair.

“Oh, Doctor von Kammacher!” she cried in slight alarm, and fixed her shimmering sea-green eyes upon the man standing there with eyes almost closed, breathing heavily, incapable of uttering a word.  As by hypnotic influence, a helpless look of self-abandonment, of complete melting away spread over her face.

The sight of her expression robbed Frederick all the more of self-control.  At last the time had come to extinguish the fires tormenting him in one wild, greedy draught.  With the hoarse cry of a beast and the fury of a man dying of thirst, he plunged deep into the slowly, slowly cooling waves of love.

VI

It was nearly eleven o’clock when Petronilla returned.  She was accompanied by an errand boy and a fair-haired young man, who was not dressed with the elegance of the residents of the club-house.  His feet were heavily shod.  While waiting in the hall he waved a wet umbrella with his sinewy left hand and a worn felt hat with his right hand, whistled very skilfully, and paced noisily to and fro in long strides, as if entirely at home in the place.

Petronilla summoned Frederick.  With an almost passionate outcry of welcome, the one of the two men ran up the stairs, two steps at a time, and the other down the stairs twice as fast.  They kissed and shook hands vigorously.

Frederick’s early visitor was Peter Schmidt, of whom he had dreamed on the Roland.  He had read Frederick’s name in the newspaper among the survivors and had come from his home in Meriden, several hours’ ride from New York, to see his old friend.  The paper also gave Frederick’s address, the reporters having got hold of it through his connection with the celebrity, Ingigerd Hahlstroem.