the fortnight's cruise was at an end, the torch had gone back to her owners, without durant, who had contrived to stay on board the windward till the latest possible moment. the yacht was lying-to, outside the same white-walled harbor where she had first found durant. she wheeled aimlessly about with slackened sails, swaying, balancing, hovering like a bird on the wing, impervious and restless, waiting for the return of the boat that was to take durant on shore. it had only just put off with the first load of guests—the manbys—under georgie chatterton's escort. as durant watched it diminishing and vanishing, he thought of how georgie had described their hostess's method of dealing with exacting friends. she was dropping them, very gently, at the nearest port. poor manby! and it would be his own turn next. and yet georgie had said, "you never know." he must and would know; at any rate, he would take his chance. meanwhile, he had a whole hour before him to find out in, for the crew had commissions in the town. that hour was frida's and his own.

the two weeks had gone he knew not how; and yet he had taken count of the procession of the days. days of clouds, when, under a drenching mist, the land [pg 341] was sodden into the likeness of the sea, the sea stilled into a leaden image of the land; days of rain, when the wet decks shone like amber, and the sea's face was smoothed out and pitted by the showers; days of sun, when they went with every sail spread, over a warm, quivering sea, whose ripples bore the shivered reflections of the sky in so many blue flames that leaped and danced with the windward in her course; days of wind, when the channel was a race of tumultuous waves, green-hearted, silver-lipped, swelling and breaking and swelling, and flowering into foam, days when the yacht careened over with steep decks, laid between wind and water, flush with the foam, driven by the wind as by her soul; days when durant and frida, who delighted in rough weather, sat out together on deck alone. they knew every sound of that marvelous world, sounds of the calm, of water lapping against the yacht's side, the tender, half-audible caress of the sea; sounds of the coming gale, more seen than heard, more felt than seen, the deep, long-drawn shudder of the sea when the wind's path is as the rain's path; and that sound, the song of her soul, the keen, high, exultant song that the wind sings, playing on her shrouds as on a many-stringed instrument. the boat, in her unrest, rolling, tossing, wheeling and flying, was herself so alive, so one with the moving wind and water, and withal so slight a shell for the humanity within her, that she had brought them, the man and the woman, nearer and nearer to the heart of being; they touched through her the deep elemental forces of the world. the sea had joined what the land had kept asunder. at this last hour of durant's last day they were drifting rather than sailing past a sunken shore, a fringe of gray slate, battered by the tide and broken into thin layers, with edges keen as knives; above it, low woods [pg 342] of dwarf oaks stretched northward, gray and phantasmal as the shore, stunted and tortured into writhing, unearthly shapes by the violence of storms. for here and now the sea had its way; it had taken on reality; and earth was the phantom, the vanishing, the vague.

they had been pacing the deck together for some minutes, but at last they stood still, looking landward.

durant sighed heavily and then he spoke.

"frida, you know what i am going to say——"

they turned and faced each other. in the man's eyes there was a cloud, in the woman's a light, a light of wonder and of terror.

she smiled bravely through her fear. "yes, i know what you are going to say. but i don't know——"

"what don't you know?"

"i don't know what you mean."

"you don't know what i mean?"

"i know you are going to say you love me, and you had better not. for i don't know what that means. the thing you call love was left out of my composition. some women are born like that."

"i don't believe it. it's only your way of saying that you don't care for me."

"i like you. i always have liked you. i'll go farther—if i ever loved any man it would be you."

"the fact remains that it isn't?"

"it isn't, and it never will be. but you may be very certain that it will never be anyone else."

"tell me one thing—was there ever a time when it might have been?"

"that isn't fair. i can't answer that question."

"you can. think—was there ever a time, no matter how short, the fraction of a minute, when if i'd only had the sense, if i had only known——" [pg 343]

"are you sure you didn't know? i was afraid you did."

"then you really mean it—that if i'd only asked you then——"

"thank heaven, you did not!"

"why are you thanking heaven?"

"because—because—i can't be sure, but i might—i might have taken you at your word."

"and why not?"

"i would have made a great mistake. the same mistake that you are making now."

"mistake?"

"you mistook the idea for the reality once, if you remember—and now aren't you mistaking the reality for the idea?"

"frida, you are too subtle; you are the most exasperating woman in the world——"

"there, you see. that's the sort of thing we should always be saying to each other if i let you have your way. but supposing you did have it; if we were married we could not understand each other better than we do; so we should not be one bit better off. by this time we should have got beyond the phase we started with——"

"but we should have had it——"

"yes; and found ourselves precisely where we are now."

"where we were yesterday, you mean."

"yes. we were good enough friends yesterday."

"and what are we to-day? enemies?"

she smiled sadly. "it looks like it. at any rate, we seem to have some difficulty in understanding each other."

"good god! how coolly you talk about it! understanding! do you never feel? has it never even occurred [pg 344] to you that i can feel? have you any notion what it is to be made of flesh and blood and nerves, and to have to stay here, squeezed up in this confounded boat, where i can't get away from you?"

"you can get away in three-quarters of an hour, and meanwhile, if you like, you can go below."

"if i did go below i should still feel you walking over my head. i should hear you breathe. and now to look at you and touch you, and know all the time that something sticks between us——"

he stopped and looked before him. it was true that the sea had brought them together. amid the d?monic triumph and jubilation of the power that claimed them for its own they, the man and the woman, had been thrown on each other, they had looked into each other's eyes, spirit to spirit, the divine thing struggling blind and uncertain in nature's tangled mesh. but now, so near, on the verge of the intangible, the divine, it came over durant that after all it was this their common nature, their flesh and blood, that was the barrier; it merged them with the world on every side, but it hedged them in and hid them from each other.

"as you know, we're the best friends in the world; there's only one thing that sticks between us—the eternal difference in our points of view."

"i was perfectly right. why couldn't i trust my first impressions? i thought you frigid and lucid and inhuman——"

"inhuman?"

"well, not a bit like a woman."

"my dear maurice, you are very like a man."

"there's something about you——"

"really? what is it, do you think?"

"oh, nothing; a slight defect, that's all. it must be as you say, and as i always thought, that you are incapable [pg 345] of feeling or understanding feeling. i repeat, there's something about you——"

"ah, maurice, if you want the truth, there's something about you. i always knew, i felt that it was in you, though i wouldn't own that it was there. now i am sure. you've been doing your best to make me sure."

"what have i made you sure of?"

"sure that you are incapable, not of loving perhaps, but of loving a certain kind of woman the way she wants to be loved. you can't help it. as i said before, it is the difference in the point of view. we should get no nearer if we talked till doomsday."

"my point of view, as you call it, has entirely changed."

"no. it is i who have changed. your point of view is, and always will be, the same."

he tried hard to understand.

"does it come to this—that if i had loved you then you would have loved me now?"

"you couldn't have loved me then. you were not that sort."

he understood her meaning and it maddened him. "it wasn't my fault. how the devil was i to see?"

"exactly, how were you? there are some things which you can't see. you can see everything you can paint, and, as you are a very clever artist, i dare say you can paint most things you can see."

"what has that got to do with it?"

"everything. it's your way all through. you love me because what you see of me is changed. and yet all that time i was the same woman i am now. i am the same woman i was then."

"but i am not the same man!"

"the very same. you have not changed at all." [pg 346]

she meant that he was deficient in that spiritual imagination which was her special power; she meant that she had perceived the implicit baseness of his earlier attitude as a man to her as a woman, a woman who had had no power to touch his senses. it was, as she had said, the difference in their points of view; hers had condemned him forever to the sensual and the seen.

he stood ashamed before her.

yet, as if she had divined his shame and measured the anguish of it and repented her, she laid her hand on his arm.

"maurice, it isn't entirely so. i have been horribly unjust."

"not you! you are justice incarnate. if i had loved you then——"

"you couldn't have loved me then."

"so you have just told me."

"you had good cause. i was not and could not be then—whatever it is that you love now."

"but i might have seen——"

"seen? seen? that's it. there was nothing to see."

her eyes, in her pity for him, filled with tears, tears that in his anger he could not understand.

"why are you always reminding me of what i was five years ago? i have changed. can't a man change if you give him five years to do it in?"

"perhaps. it's a long time."

"time? it's an eternity. if i was a brute to you, do you suppose the consciousness of my brutality isn't a far worse punishment than anything i could have made you feel?"

she raised her eyebrows. "what? have you been suffering all this time—this eternity?" [pg 347]

"yes. that is, i'm suffering enough now."

"then perhaps you have some idea of what you made me feel."

"again?"

"it's the first time i've reproached you with it, even in my thoughts."

he looked at her with unbelieving eyes. and yet he knew that it was true. her sweetness, her lucidity, had been proof against the supreme provocation. she had forgiven, if she had not forgotten, the insult that no woman remembers and forgives.

as his eyes wandered the hand that had lain so lightly on his arm gripped it to command his attention, and he trembled through all his being. but she no longer shrank from him; she kept her hold, she tightened it, insisting.

"oh, maurice! haven't i told you that i understood?"

he smiled. "yes. thank god i can always appeal to your understanding, if i can't get at your heart. supposing i didn't care for you then? supposing i was too stupid to see what you were? is five years, though it may be eternity, so long a time to learn to know you in? you take a great deal of learning, frida; you are very difficult. there's so much more of you than any man can grasp. but you are the only woman i ever cared to know. i believe you have a thousand sides to you, and every one—every one i can see—appeals to me. there's no end to the interest. whatever i see or don't see, i always find something more, and i never could be tired of looking."

she sighed and was silent.

"and you blame me because i couldn't see all this at once? because it took me five years to love you? remember, you were very cautious; you wouldn't let [pg 348] me see more than a bit at a time. but i love every bit of you—heart and soul, and body and brain; i love you as i never could love any other woman in the world—the world, frida," he added, pointing the hackneyed phrase. "you are the world."

they had never stopped pacing the deck together, as they talked, turn after turn, alike and yet unlike in their eagerness and unrest. now they stood still. far off they could see the returning boat, a speck at the mouth of the harbor, and they knew that their time was short.

"maurice," she said, "before you go i have a confession to make. i wasn't quite honest with you just now when i said i only liked you five years ago. i know very well that i loved you. the world has taught me so much."

the world! he frowned angrily as she said it. but through all his anger he admired the reckless nobility of soul that had urged her to that last admission, by way of softening the pangs and penalties she dealt to him. would any other woman have confessed as much to the man who had once despised her, and now found himself in her power?

she went on. "i thought you might like to know it. i've gone far enough, perhaps; but i'll go farther still. i believe i would give the world to be able to love you now."

"frida, if you can go as far as that——"

"i can go no farther. no, maurice, not one step."

"you can. i believe, even now, i could make you love me."

"no. you see, women in my position, my unfortunate position, want to be loved for themselves."

"i do love you for yourself. do you doubt that, too?" [pg 349]

"i do not doubt it. i am quite sure of it. that's where it is. i know you love me for myself, and so many men have loved me—not for myself. do you suppose that doesn't touch me? if anything could make me love you that would. and since it doesn't——"

the inference was obvious.

"is it because you can't give up your life?"

"it is—partly. and yet i might do that. i did it once."

"you did, indeed. i can't conceive how you, being you, lived the life you did——"

"i owed it. it was the price of my freedom."

her freedom! no wonder that she valued it, if she had paid that price!

she went on dreamily, as if speaking more to herself than him. "to have power over your life—to do what you like with it—take it up or throw it down, to fling it away if that seems the best thing to do. you're not fit to take up your life if you haven't the strength to put it down, too."

"frida, if you were my wife you wouldn't have to put it down. i'm not asking you to give up the world for me; i'm not even asking you to give up one day of your life. your life would be exactly what it is now—plus one thing. you'll say, 'what can i give you that you haven't got?' i can give you what you've never had. you don't know what a man's love is and can be; and you must own that without that knowledge your experience, even as experience, is not quite as complete as it might be."

the boat—the boat that was to take him to the shore—was getting nearer. it was his last chance. and while he staked everything on that chance, he thought of frida as he had first seen her, as she sat tragically [pg 350] at the whist table at coton manor, dealing out the cards with deft and supple fingers.

now she was dealing out his fate.

he remembered how she had said, "mr. durant wins because he doesn't care about the game." because he cared—cared so supremely—was he going to lose?

there were so many things in frida that he had not reckoned with. she was an extraordinary mixture of impulse and reserve, and she had astonished him more than once by her readiness to give herself away; but beyond a certain point—the point of view in fact—her self-possession was complete. still, he left no argument untried, for there was no knowing—no knowing what undiscovered spring he might chance to touch in that rich and subtle nature.

her self-possession was absolute. she parried his probe with a thrust.

"it is your own fault if my experience isn't complete. you should have told me these things five years ago. as you say, nobody else has instructed me since."

"i dare say they've done their best. of course, other men have loved you——"

"they haven't——"

"but i believe my love would be worth more to you than theirs, for the simple reason that i understand you too well to insist on it. i should always know how much and how little you wanted. for we are rather alike in some ways. i would leave you free."

"i know you would. i am sure. and i would—i would so gladly—but i can't! you see, maurice, i have loved you."

"all the more reason——"

"all the less. i knew what you thought and felt about me, and it made no difference; i loved you just the same, because i understood. then i had to fight [pg 351] it. it was hard work, but i did it very thoroughly. it will never have to be done again. do you see?"

yes; he saw very plainly. if frida could not love him there was nobody but himself to blame. he also saw the advantage she had given him. she had owned that she had loved him, and he had hardly realized the full force of the pluperfect. what had been might be again. she was a woman in whom the primordial passion, once awakened, is eternal.

he pressed his advantage home.

"and why had you to fight so hard?"

"because the thing was stronger than myself, and i wouldn't be beaten. because i hated myself for caring for you, as i hate myself now for not caring."

in her blind pity she laid her fingers on his trembling hand. she who used to drop his hand as if it had been flame, she should have known better than to touch him now.

he looked at her with hot hungry eyes. his brain in its feverish intensity took note of trifles—the tortuous pattern of the braid on her gown, the gold sleeve-links at her wrists, the specks of brine that glistened on her temples under the wind-woven strands of her black hair; it recorded these things and remembered them afterward. and all the time the boat came nearer, and the slow, steady stroke of the oars measured his hour by minutes, till the sweat, sprung from the labor and passion of his nerves, stood out in beads on his forehead.

he looked at her; and her beauty, the beauty born of her freedom and abounding life, the beauty he worshiped, was implacable; the divinity in it remained untouched by his desire.

"you needn't care," he said desperately. "i'm not [pg 352] asking you to care; i'm not asking you to give me your love, but only to take mine."

she smiled. "i'm not so dishonest as to borrow what i can't repay."

his voice was monotonous in its iteration. "i'm not talking about repayment; i'll risk that. i don't want you to borrow it. i want you to take it, keep it, spend it any way you like, and—throw it away when you can't do anything more with it."

"and never return it? ah, my friend! we can't do these things."

she dropped into the deck-chair, exhausted with the discussion. her brow was heavy with thought; she was still racking her brains to find some argument that would appease him.

"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 [pg 353] 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.

durant was silent. her confession was still ringing [pg 354] 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.