"When are you going to pay me a visit again?"
Frederick made some inconsequential reply.
Necks in standing collars, bare throats encircled with gold chains and pearls turned toward the captain's table. Frederick could not recall ever having had an experience so painfully humiliating. Ingigerd saw nothing and felt nothing. Achleitner, however, seemed to be rather ill at ease under the perceptible cross-fire of the animated company, and tried to lead her away. Finally, she left the tortured man, saying:
"My, you're dull and stupid! I don't like you." At which the captain's corner burst into a prolonged laugh, which was a relief to everybody's but Frederick's feelings.
"I assure you," said Frederick, with a tolerable attempt at dry irony, "I don't know what I have done to deserve this distinction, or what I shall do to deserve it in the future."
Then they spoke of other things.
The clear weather and the prospect of a peaceful night filled the festive diners with undimmed gaiety. They ate, they drank, they laughed, they flirted, all in the delightful consciousness that they were citizens of the departing nineteenth century, with the probability of being citizens of the even grander twentieth century.
XXIX
After dinner the two physicians went to Doctor Wilhelm's cabin, where they sat together discussing the resultant of modern civilisation.