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.