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 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.'