"I loved you—yes. And in my own way I love you now, if you could only be content with my way."
"Haven't you told me that your way is not my way?"
"Yes; and I've done worse than that. I've been talking to you as if you had made me suffer tortures, as if you had brought me all the pain of existence instead of all the pleasure. If you only knew! There's nothing I've been enjoying all these five years that I don't owe to you—to you and nobody else. You were very good to me even at the first; and afterward—well, I believe I love life as few women can love it, and it came to me through you. Do you think I can ever forget that? Forget what I owe you? You stood by me and showed me the way out; you stood by and opened the door of the world."
To stand by and open the door for her—it was all he was good for. In other words, she had made use of him. Well, had he not proposed to make use of her? After all, in what did his view of her differ from the Colonel's, which he abominated? All along, from the very first, it had been the old theory of the woman for the man. Frida for the Colonel's use, for his (Durant's) amusement, and now for his possession. Under all its disguises it was only an exalted form of the tyranny of sex. And Frida was making him see that there was another way of looking at it—that a woman, like nature, like life, may be an end in herself, to be loved for herself, not for what he could make out of her.
"I am a woman of the world, a worldly woman, if you like. I love the world better than anyone in it. And I'm a sort of pantheist, I suppose; I worship the world. But you will always be a part of the world I love and worship; I could not keep you out of it if I would."
The exultation in her tone provoked his laughter. "Heaven bless you—that's only a nice way of saying that I'm done for.
'He is made one with Nature; there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird.'
You have made a clean sweep of me and my personal immortality."
The splash of the oars sounded nearer. They could hear the voices of the crew; the boat, lightened of her first load, was returning with horrible rapidity, it came dancing toward them in its malignant glee; and they sat facing each other for the last time, tongue-tied.
They had paced the deck together again; one more turn for the last time.