Again Conrad gives Decoud virtually omniscient insight into the motives of other characters. He divines Charles Gould's dynamite in all but its details, and his comment about Gould's "sentimental unfaithfulness" almost exactly echoes the narrator's own. Personally, I think that Decoud's continued restatement of the Goulds' divergent ideals becomes a bit too much. But the reiteration carries a different tone now that Decoud has lost Antonia: whereas in the last chapter, with Mrs Gould, he almost exulted in the separateness of human motives, now he dwells on the damage such separateness wreaks on love. "Separation" has gone too far for him, and he no longer regards it entirely as a virtue.