"When did geniuses ever do anything morally? Even the creator of heaven and earth did not know how to. He produced an immoral world. Every high form of human intellectual activity has thrown ethics overboard. What would a historian be who, instead of making researches, would moralise? What would a physician be who would stop to moralise? Or a great statesman, who would toe the chalk-line of your middle-class ten commandments? As for an artist, when he moralises, he is a fool and a knave. And please tell me, what sort of a business would the church do if all of us were moral? There would be no church." There was a cold gleam of audaciousness in the Swede's eyes. His utterances produced a strange impression. Even if he had pronounced fewer wild paradoxes, Frederick von Kammacher would have succumbed to his spell. He eagerly sought for resemblances between father and daughter, or, more accurately, he observed them without seeking. They were very evident to one who, alas, to his own torture, was carrying the daughter's picture alive in his soul. As long as the Swede spoke, he could not help wavering between repugnance and admiration, and he kept asking himself whether this man was really the sort of person that Arthur Stoss had described him to be, no gentleman, a weakling, an idle ragamuffin. XXIII As they arose from table and were ascending the companionway to the deck, Hahlstroem suddenly said to Frederick: "My daughter is expecting you. We have a friend on board, Mr. Achleitner, a soft creature, but the possessor of much money, which he doesn't know the best way to get rid of. So he made it worth while for one of the officers to give up his luxurious cabin opening on deck to my daughter. Unfortunately, that gives him the right to make an unmitigated nuisance of himself sometimes." When the men entered the comparatively roomy cabin on deck, they found Achleitner sitting on a rather unsteady chair, while Mara, carefully wrapped up, was lying stretched out on a couch. She instantly called to her father, please to remove Mr. Achleitner, who was boring her, and signified to Frederick that she had a special favour to ask of him. Hahlstroem and Achleitner obediently withdrew, and Frederick _nolens volens_ had to seat himself on the camp-chair. "How can I be of service?" he asked. She put one of those inconsequential requests with which she liked to busy everybody about her. She did this, she explained, because if many people were not doing something for her, she felt neglected. "But if you don't want to do it," she added--it was to get her a bottle of perfume, or something of the sort, for which a stewardess would have been the right person to ask--"but if you don't want to do it, then please don't. I should prefer it if you didn't. In fact, if I bore you, I would just as soon sit alone." Frederick realised that this beginning was a foolish expression of embarrassment.