"Not exactly that," rejoined Frederick, "but if you would allow me, I
should like to regard you as still a girl, a distinguished little lady,
whose reputation cannot be too carefully guarded against the faintest
blemish."
"Reputation!" sneered the girl. "You are very much mistaken if you think
I ever cared for anything of the sort. I'd rather be disreputable ten
times over and live as I please, than have a good reputation and die of
boredom. I must enjoy my life, Doctor von Kammacher."
Frederick's teeth clenched. Outwardly composed, he was suffering the
pangs of torture.
Ingigerd proceeded to reveal her life in a series of confidences of such
shocking content as to be worthy of a Laïs or a Phryne. Doctor von
Kammacher, she said, might be sorry for her if he wanted to, but nobody
was to make a mistake about her. Everybody associating with her was to
know exactly who she was. In this she betrayed a certain dread, as one
who would absolutely guard others as well as herself against the
catastrophe of disillusionment.
When the sun had set, and Ingigerd, still with that suggestive, sensual,
evil smile on her lips, had finished her hideous confession, Frederick
found himself confronting the knowledge of a childhood so outrageous as
to be worse than anything he had met with in all his experience as a
physician.
Several times in the course of her narrative, Achleitner and her father
had come to take her inside, but she had angrily driven them away. It was
Frederick who finally helped her back to her cabin.
In his own cabin, without even removing his overcoat, he threw himself on
his berth to think over the inconceivable story. He sighed, he gnashed
his teeth, he wanted to doubt it. Several times he said aloud, "No!" or
"Impossible!" and beat his fists against the mattress of the berth above.
He could have sworn an oath that this time there had not been a single
lie in Mara's whole shameless narrative. "Mara, or the Spider's Victim."
Now, of a sudden, he understood her dance! She had danced the thing she
had lived in her own life!