Frederick had been profoundly humiliated by the coarse insult offered him in the smoking-room.  He knew of no other way to escape the impression of it except by a sort of ostrich policy.  For that reason he had passed over the incident lightly when speaking to Doctor Wilhelm.  Once his feeling of delicacy, smarting like a sensitive nerve, had ceased to ache so intensely, he looked upon the scandal much as a somnambulist would look upon the thing that has awakened him and guarded him against a humiliating fall.  For more than half an hour his passion for the little devil of a dancer had turned into disgust and repugnance, until now he suddenly had to admit once again that separation from her was inconceivable.

“That little dancer is a piquant wench,” said Stoss, as if he had divined Frederick’s thoughts.  “It would not seem at all strange to me if an inexperienced man were to fall into her toils.  I think she resembles one of the younger Barrison sisters, who sing ’Linger Longer Lucy, Linger Longer Loo.’  A man must certainly don armour in dealing with her.”

“I am completely at a loss to understand,” lied Frederick, “how I ever came to fall under suspicion with that creature.  She is of absolutely no interest to me.”

“Good Lord, Doctor von Kammacher!  Who doesn’t fall under suspicion with her?” He laughed unblushingly.  “I myself did.”

Frederick suffered.  He looked sidewise at the armless trunk, and his soul writhed in humiliation at the thought of his own ridiculousness.

Stoss went on to philosophise on erotics in general.  He, the Don Juan without arms, read Frederick a lecture on the art of handling women.  This led to his boasting, which detracted markedly from his quality of fineness.  His intellect also shrank in direct proportion to the increase of his vanity.  Something seemed to be working in him impelling him to impress people at all costs with his successes as a man.

A servant-girl led two children by.  Frederick drew a breath of relief, for she diverted Stoss from his unsavoury theme.

“Well, Rosa,” he called, “how is Mrs. Liebling?” It was his habit to obtrude himself upon everybody.  From the gossip of Bulke, his valet, he had learned of Rosa and her cross.  The difficult lady she served was the excitable person of whom the barber had told Frederick and with whom he was acquainted from certain impressions of his hearing.  Rosa, who was carrying Ella Liebling, a girl of five years, on her crimson arm, looked pleased and laughed.

“She is not coming on deck.  She’s taken up with fortune-telling and table-turning.”

Bulke, in whose eyes Rosa seemed to have found unqualified favour, took Siegfried Liebling, a boy of seven, from her hand and helped her place both children safely in steamer chairs.

“There is nothing to beat a crazy woman,” Stoss declared.  “That Mrs. Liebling actually called in Mr. Pfundner, the head-steward, to help her with Rosa”—­the very Rosa, who unwearyingly and self-sacrificingly worked for her day and night, in good weather and bad.  The worst to be said against her was that at utmost she was a little too ready with her tongue.