A fresh wind was still blowing from the southeast, slanting the vessel slightly to the side where the sun hung over the horizon, turning the heavens in the west into a great, dusky conflagration.  That sun, beneath which a slate-coloured sea was rolling in waves gently tossing foam—­that sea, slate-coloured in the east and a cold, darkening blue in the west and south—­that sky above, with great masses of clouds—­these were to Frederick like the three mighty motives of a world symphony.

“Any one who is susceptible to them,” he thought, “has no real cause to feel small, for all their awful majesty.”

He was standing near the log, the long line of which was trailing in the ocean.  The great ship was quivering under his feet.  From the two smoke-stacks the wind was pressing the smoke down over the waves, and a melancholy procession of figures, widows in long crepe veils, wringing their hands in mute grief, drifted away backward, as if into the twilight gloom of eternal damnation.  He heard the talking of the passengers, and represented to himself all that was united within the walls of that immense house, hurrying forward restlessly—­how much hunting, fleeing, hoping, fearing.  And in his soul, responding to the universal miracle, arose the great unanswered questions that seek to penetrate to the dark meaning of existence:  “Why?” “What for?”

XIII

He began to pace the deck again without noticing that he drew near Ingigerd Hahlstroem.

“You are wanted,” a voice behind him suddenly announced.  Seeing how he started, Doctor Wilhelm excused himself.

“You were dreaming; you are a dreamer,” Mara called.  “Come over here.  I don’t like these stupid men.”

The six or eight gentlemen in attendance, with the exception of Achleitner, laughed and withdrew with a humorous show of great obedience.

“Why do you stay here, Achleitner?” Thus the faithful canine received his dismissal.

Frederick saw how the men withdrew together in groups at a little distance, whispering as they usually do when having sport with a pretty woman who is not exactly a prude; and it was with some shame, at any rate, with expressed repugnance that he took the stool still warm from Achleitner’s body.  Mara began to rhapsodise about nature.

“Isn’t everything prettiest when the sun goes down?  I think it’s fun—­at least I like it,” she quickly substituted, when Frederick made a wry face at the remark.  She spoke in sentences that all began with “I don’t like,” or “I despise,” or “I do detest.”  In the face of that vast cosmic drama unfolding itself before her senses, she sat wholly unmoved and unsympathetic, displaying the overweening arrogance of a spoiled child.  Frederick wanted to jump up, but remained where he was, pulling nervously at the end of his moustache, while his face assumed a stiff, mocking expression.  Mara noticed it, and was visibly upset by this unusual form of homage.