"At that rate it will take two weeks to reach New York," cried Hans
Füllenberg, somewhat too forwardly, from where he was sitting a little
distance away. He was still flirting with the English lady from
Southampton; but now, irresistibly drawn to Mara's sphere, he jumped up
and left her, bringing the tone that was agreeable to Mara and all her
admirers, except Frederick von Kammacher. The jolliness of the little
group communicated itself to the rest of the promenade deck.

Disgusted with the orgy of banality, Frederick moved off to be alone with
his thoughts. The deck, which in the middle of the day had been dripping
with water, was now quite dry. He walked to the stern and looked out over
the broad, foaming wake. He heaved a deep breath of joy at the thought
that he was no longer in the narrow spell of the little female demon.
Suddenly the long tension of his soul relaxed. Though he might have
suffered a profound disenchantment, yet he felt as if he had taken a
sobering bath, which left him a free agent, alone with his own soul. He
felt ashamed of his instability. His passion for that little person
seemed ridiculous, and he covertly beat his breast and rapped his
forehead with his knuckles as if to awaken himself from a dream.

But, finally, the great cosmic moment of the slowly setting sun cast its
spell over the young German adventurer.

A fresh wind was still blowing from the southeast, slanting the vessel
slightly to the side where the sun hung over the horizon, turning the
heavens in the west into a great, dusky conflagration. That sun, beneath
which a slate-coloured sea was rolling in waves gently tossing foam--that
sea, slate-coloured in the east and a cold, darkening blue in the west
and south--that sky above, with great masses of clouds--these were to
Frederick like the three mighty motives of a world symphony.