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

"I see three threads which the Parcæ 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.