Frederick had one of those idealistic heads set on broad shoulders characteristic of certain circles in the “nation of poets and philosophers.”  His ancestors had been scholars, statesmen, and soldiers.  The general, his father, was in externals wholly the soldier; but beneath his uniform, his heritage from his own father, a renowned botanist, director of the botanical gardens at Genoa, actively manifested itself in a strong interest in science.  Frederick’s mother was a well-read woman, passionately fond of the theatre and an enthusiastic lover of Goethe and the poets of the romantic school.  Her father, who had been prime minister of Wittenberg, as a student and even later in his career, composed poetry, which her adoring love for him had caused her to publish and several times revise and reprint.

Though Frederick had never been ill, there were times when he showed symptoms of a peculiar passionateness.  His friends knew that when all went well, he was a dormant volcano; that when things did not go so well, he was a volcano spitting fire and smoke.  To all appearances equally removed from effeminateness and brutality, he was subject, nevertheless, to accesses of both.  Now and then a dithyrambic rapture came over him, especially when there was wine in his blood.  He would pace about, and if it was daytime, might address a pathetic, sonorous invocation to the sun, or at night, to the constellations, particularly to the chaste Cassiopeia.

Since she had known him, Mara felt that his proximity was by no means lacking in danger; but being what she was, it piqued her to play with fire.

“I don’t like people that think themselves better than others,” she said.

“Being a Pharisee, I do,” Frederick drily rejoined, and went on cruelly:  “I think for your years you are extremely forward and cock-sure.  Your dance pleases me better than your conversation.”  He felt much like a man berating his sister.

Mara silently studied him for a moment, a suggestive smile on her lips.

“According to your notions,” she finally said, “a girl mustn’t speak unless she’s spoken to, and she mustn’t have any opinions of her own.  You look as if the only sort of girl you could love would be one that was always saying, ’I am a poor, ignorant thing.  I don’t understand what he sees in me.’  I hate such nincompoops!”

Conversation came to a halt.  Frederick half rose to leave, but she restrained him with a self-willed, pouting, “No.”  There was something childlike and honest in that pouting “no” which touched his soul and drew him down on the stool again.

“In Berlin, while I danced, I always had to look at you,” she continued, holding her doll against her lips so that her little nose was a bit flattened.  “The very first time I saw you, I felt something like a bond between us; I knew we should meet again.”

Frederick started, though not for an instant deceived, knowing this must be an oft-used formula for establishing a relationship, and in essence a lie.