Ingigerd proceeded to reveal her life in a series of confidences of such shocking content as to be worthy of a Laïs or a Phryne. Doctor von Kammacher, she said, might be sorry for her if he wanted to, but nobody was to make a mistake about her. Everybody associating with her was to know exactly who she was. In this she betrayed a certain dread, as one who would absolutely guard others as well as herself against the catastrophe of disillusionment.
When the sun had set, and Ingigerd, still with that suggestive, sensual, evil smile on her lips, had finished her hideous confession, Frederick found himself confronting the knowledge of a childhood so outrageous as to be worse than anything he had met with in all his experience as a physician.
Several times in the course of her narrative, Achleitner and her father had come to take her inside, but she had angrily driven them away. It was Frederick who finally helped her back to her cabin.
In his own cabin, without even removing his overcoat, he threw himself on his berth to think over the inconceivable story. He sighed, he gnashed his teeth, he wanted to doubt it. Several times he said aloud, "No!" or "Impossible!" and beat his fists against the mattress of the berth above. He could have sworn an oath that this time there had not been a single lie in Mara's whole shameless narrative. "Mara, or the Spider's Victim." Now, of a sudden, he understood her dance! She had danced the thing she had lived in her own life!
XIV
"I have set my all on nothing."
To the accompaniment of this refrain beating in his soul Frederick maintained an outer show of hilarity. He and the ship's doctor were drinking champagne. He had ordered the first bottle with the soup and had immediately drunk several glasses.
The more he drank the less he felt the smart of a certain burning wound, and the more wonderful the world appeared, full of miracles and riddles, surrounding and penetrating him with the intoxication of an adventurer's life. He was a brilliant entertainer, with an easy, happy way in conversation of popularising his rich store of knowledge, and with a light humour, which stood at his command even when, as now, grim humour crawled in the depths of his being, like evil reptiles. Thus it was that the captain's corner that evening fell under his spell, both of his jocular self and serious self.
Though he had lost his belief that science and modern progress alone possess the power to convey happiness, he extolled their virtues. As a matter of fact, in the festive gleam of the countless electric lights, excited by the wine, the music, and the rhythmic pulse beat of the moving vessel, it seemed to him at times as if humanity in a festal procession with music playing were sailing to the Isles of the Blessed. Perhaps, he said, science may some day teach man the secret of immortality. Ways and means would be found to keep the cells of the body young. Dead animals had been brought back to life by pumping a salt solution into them. He spoke of the wonders of surgery, always the theme of conversation when a man of the present, over his champagne and pâté de foie gras, triumphs in the superiority of his age over all other ages. In a short while, he declared, chemistry would solve the social question, and man would forget what it is to worry about food. Why, chemistry was on the verge of discovering how to make bread of stones, a thing that hitherto only plants could do. Frederick continued in a similar strain, speaking by rote, and scarcely looking up, yet fascinating his listeners.