In his icy room in the English hotel, Frederick meditated on his past.

“I see three threads which the Parcae have woven into my life.  The snapping of the thread that represents my scientific career leaves me utterly indifferent.  The bloody tearing of the other thread”—­he had in mind his love for his wife—­“makes the first event insignificant.  But even though I should still hold a place among the most hopeful of the younger generation of scientists, the third thread, which is still whole, which pierces my soul like a live wire, would have nullified my ambitions and all my endeavours in science.”

The third thread was a passion.

Frederick von Kammacher had gone to Paris to rid himself of this passion; but the object of it, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a Swedish teacher of stage dancing, held him in bondage against his will.  His love had turned into a disease, which had reached an acute stage, probably because the gloomy events of so recent occurrence had induced in him a state in which men are peculiarly susceptible to love’s poison.

It was a friend of his, a physician, who had introduced him in Berlin to the girl and her father, and who later, when sufficiently acquainted with Frederick’s secret, raging love, had to take it upon himself to inform the enamoured man of every change in the couple’s address.

Doctor von Kammacher’s scanty luggage did not indicate careful preparation for a long trip.  In a fit of desperation, or, rather, in an outburst of passion, he had made the hasty decision to catch the Roland at Southampton when he learned that the Swede and his daughter had embarked on it at Bremen on the twenty-third of January.

II

After lying in bed about an hour, Frederick arose, knocked a hole in the ice crust in the pitcher, washed himself, and in a fever of restlessness descended again to the lower rooms of the little hotel.  In the reading-room sat a pretty young Englishwoman and a German Jewish merchant, not so pretty and not so young.  The dreariness of waiting produced sociability.  Frederick and the German entered into a conversation.  The German informed Frederick that he had lived in the United States and was returning by the Roland.

The air was grey, the room cold, the young lady impatiently paced up and down in front of the fireplace, where there was no fire, and the conversation of the new acquaintances dwindled into monosyllables.

The condition of the unhappy lover, as a rule, is concealed from the persons he meets, or unintelligible to them.  In either case it is ridiculous.  A man in love is alternately transported and tormented by brilliant and gloomy illusions.  In spite of the cold, cutting wind, the young fool of love was driven restlessly out to roam the streets and alleys of the port.  He thought of what an embarrassing position he had been in when the Jewish merchant had insinuatingly inquired for the purpose of his journey.  In his effort not to reveal the secret motive of his ocean crossing, Frederick had stammered and stuttered and given some sort of a vague reply.  He decided that from now on, in answer to intrusive questioners, he would say he was going to America to see Niagara Falls, Yellowstone Park, and visit an old collegemate of his, also a physician.