Durant was silent. Her confession was still ringing in his ears; but it rang confusedly, it left his reason as unconvinced as his heart was unsatisfied.
She had loved him, and not in her way, as she called it, but in his. And that was a mystery. He felt that if he could account for it he would have grasped the clue, the key of the position. Whatever she might say, these things were more than subtleties of the pure reason, they were matters of the heart. He was still building a hope beyond the ruins of hope.
"Frida," he said at last, "you are a wonderful woman, so I can believe that you loved me. But, seeing what I was and what you knew about me, I wonder why?"
Louder and nearer they heard the stroke of the oars measuring the minutes. Frida's eyes were fixed on the boat as she answered.
"Why? Ah, Maurice, how many times have I asked myself that question? Why does any woman love any man? As far as I can see, in nine hundred cases out of a thousand woman is unhappy because she loves. In the thousandth case she loves because she is unhappy."
The boat had arrived. The oars knocked against the yacht's side with a light shock. Durant's hour was at an end.
Frida held out her hand. He hardly touched it, hardly raised his eyes to her as she said "Good-bye." But on the last step of the gangway he turned and looked at her—the woman in a thousand.
She was not unhappy.
XVII
Frida had played high and yet she had won the game of life; that dangerous game which most women playing single-handed are bound to lose. She had won, but whether by apathy or care, by skill or divine chance, he could not tell. As to himself he was very certain; when he might have won her he did not care to win, now that he had lost her he would always care. That was just his way.