Doctor Wilhelm, let us remain this side of
the Rubicon. That little girl slightly bores me. By the way, can you tell
me how I came to bring down on myself that shout when I entered the
smoking-room and that man's vulgar remark? To be sure, as a physician and
free-thinker it's a matter of indifference to me."

"Oh," said Wilhelm, trying by an air of lightness to appease Frederick,
"this is all it was. Fuellenberg probably saw you coming out of Miss
Hahlstroem's cabin, and said something in the smoking-room. You know
his mischievous way."

"I'll box his ears," said Frederick.

"The trouble is, the little girl is making herself generally conspicuous.
The worst rumours are afloat about her. All men seem alike to her,
whether stewards, firemen, sailors, or cabin-boys. And that greasy
Achleitner! I assure you, all over the ship, in the forecastle, among the
stewards when they polish the silver, and in the officers' cabins, they
do nothing but titter and laugh at her and Achleitner and anybody falling
under suspicion on her account."

"Don't you think that's slander?"

"Why, you and I are physicians. I don't care a fig one way or the other."

Frederick laughed. "I have set my all on nothing."

Suddenly he said:

"You're right. I'm of the same opinion. I must really throw overboard
that old idealistic German Adam sticking in me like a Sunday afternoon
preacher."

The two men laughed. Their mood turned merrier, chiming in with the
general atmosphere of hilarity.

One reason for this predominating sense of happiness was the fact that
all the passengers, after struggling with nausea and sleeplessness during
those miserable, crawling, endless hours in the doleful grave of their
cabins, had learned to appreciate the value of mere healthy existence.
Merely to live, merely to live! That was the cry that rang in every step,
every laugh, every word, drowning all care. None of those concerns which
each of them had dragged on board, whether from Europe or America, now
had the least might. Merely to live was to win in the great lottery. They
knew sunshine follows rain, and they said to themselves, "If worse comes
to worst, you will willingly put up with bread and salt and a hoe and a
vegetable garden, and no one in the world will be a happier mortal than
you."

Those promenading men and women were each glad of the other's existence.
They loved one another and were ready without hesitation to commit all
sorts of follies, deemi