ttermost margin of the world; and that by a million
radiating paths. It was not that she left Maurice behind her, for
all those million paths led back to him, the man was the center of
her universe; but then the center is infinitely small compared with
the circumference. He saw himself diminished to a mathematical point
in this cosmopolitan's cosmos. For Frida he had ceased to have any
objective existence, he was an intellectual quantity, what the
Colonel would have called an abstraction. There was nothing for him
to do but to accept the transcendent position.

Thus, through all the tension of his soul, his intellect still
struggled for comprehension.

Meanwhile, from his window looking over the white-walled harbor, he
could see the _Windward_ with all her sails spread, outward bound.

He watched her till there was nothing to be seen but her flying
sails, till the sails were one white wing on a dim violet sea, till
the white wing was a gray dot, indistinct on the margin of the
world.

XVIII

He cared immensely. But not to come behind her in generosity and
comprehension he owned that he had no right to complain because this
remarkable woman loved the world better than one man, even if that
man happened to be himself; in fact, while his heart revolted
against it, his pure intellect admired her attitude, for the world
is a greater thing that any man in it.

Now and again letters reached him across seas and continents, letters
with strange, outlandish postmarks, wonderful, graphic, triumphant
letters, which showed him plainly, though unintentionally, that Frida
Tancred was still on the winning side, that she could do without him.
Across seas and continents he watched her career with a sad and
cynical sympathy, as a man naturally watches a woman who triumphs
where he has failed.

Meanwhile he lived on her letters, long and expansive, or short and
to the point. They proved a stimulating diet; they had so much of
her full-blooded personality in them. His own grew shorter and
shorter and more and more to the point, till at last he wrote:
"Delightful. Only tell me when you've had enough of it."

The answer to that came bounding, as it were, from the other side of
the Atlantic. "Not yet. I shall never have enough of it. I've only
been 'seeing the world,' only traveling from point to point along an
infinite surface, and there's no satisfaction in that. I'm not
tired--not tired, Maurice, remember. I don't want to stop.