From Archie she had no word, except an occasional line or two with the money-order that came regularly on the first of each month, and was as regularly returned. The magazine connections Stefan Nikolai had made for her provided what money she needed, and she had not yet sufficiently forgiven Archie to be willing to accept anything from him.
At first she wrote to him, not so much from any sense of duty, as from pity. She did not forget what had passed between them, she made no attempt to ignore the fact that he had failed her utterly in every way. But she no longer had time to brood upon her own affairs. In the vortex of life where she now found herself, personal troubles seemed somehow to disappear into the common whole. Constant association with others' sorrow developed her quality of sympathy to an almost painful extent; and though she knew that Ellen Neal was making Archie comfortable enough in the old rooms on Poplar Street, his loneliness, his humble acquiescence in disgrace, hurt like a bruise on her heart. So she wrote to him, impersonally but kindly.
Since he so rarely replied, however, her letters gradually ceased. Evidently Archie, like many others, found it difficult to forgive where he had wronged. Joan shrugged—a little gesture she had learned from Nikolai—and dismissed her husband as much as possible from her mind.
There was much else to occupy it: not only in the way of work but of pleasure. Paris, even in her grief, did not forget the human necessity for pleasure, nor did Stefan Nikolai. She saw rather less of him than she had expected to, for he was frequently absent for weeks at a time on unexplained journeys, about which Joan had learned to ask no questions. But whether he was near her or not, she was always conscious of his enveloping care, his devoted watchfulness. He gave her, too, many friends besides Lady Arbuthnot.
Once Sacha, always left on guard over Joan during these absences of Nikolai's, betrayed the fact that his master had gone into Russia. Joan taxed him with it when he returned.
"Russia is not safe for you, Stefan!—you told me so yourself."
"Surely you would not have me at such a time seek only places of safety?" he smiled.
"Why can't you stick to the hospital work you came over for, instead of gallivanting about all over the place?" she demanded, with a petulance that concealed anxiety.
"One goes where one is useful," he replied quietly. "There are many who know more about medicine than I, but few who know more about Russia—except in Germany, perhaps! My countrymen are very susceptible to the spoken word."
It was his only explanation of his frequent disappearances; but Joan, understanding that wars must be won not only on the battlefield, uttered no more protests, and made the most of her friend when she had him.