The manner in which Conrad gives us our first sight of Decoud -- through Antonia's eyes, shaded by her symbolic fan -- signals the bond between them, as well as the dominating force she represents in his life. Though Decoud represents skepticism, it is a struggling skepticism carried out wholly under the eyes of Antonia's idealism until his final act, when he is cut loose and is indeed under no one's eyes (as the narrator deliberately points out ). There is perhaps an even deeper level to the duality here, in which the concept of skepticism can only be seen through the eyes of idealism. The novel suggests that we require idealism even to frame thoughts and communicate; for example, when Decoud reaches the pinnacle of "utter scepticism" the world appears to him as "a succession of incomprehensible images." At this level Antonia's eyes represent the illusion of the novel itself, a dream of coherency from which vantage point only can skepticism be viewed and understood.