"You mean—Mother," she said. "Oh, but I'm not all Cremona! I think there's a good deal in me of the fiddle Nero played while Rome burned. It's not fair to be expected to live up to a self-sacrificing mother! If you don't, you have failed her; if you do, she gets the credit—Besides, I'm needed here just as much as I am in Louisville. More! Not only these poor people need me, but—you do, Stefan."
She had brought it into the open at last, the one thing which they had never yet discussed in their discussions of everything under the sun; that eternal human question of Thou-and-I. She was a little frightened, dreading yet eager for the answer.
It was long in coming. Nikolai understood the crisis they had reached. He knew that it was his to put out his hand and hold her, to keep forever in his life this one gift of the gods he craved, the fulfilled hope which had been his beacon through many a lonely year. Once before because of a mistake in judgment he had lost her, to her own unhappiness. There must be no more mistakes in judgment.
But the habit of truth in thought and word was too great for him.
"No," he said at last, "I do not need you."
He saw her wince.
"I do not need you," he repeated steadily, "and you do not need me, Joan. People like us get on quite well alone. Better, perhaps. It is not good for us to be too happy—Besides, what we already have of each other cannot be affected by time or space. You know that? The rest—is extraneous. Tell me this: Have you ever in any important moment of your life forgotten me, have you ever failed to be conscious of my presence, no matter what the distance between us?"
She looked deep into the luminous eyes fixed upon hers.
"Never, Stefan. Even in my unthinking school-days, even in that strange time after I lost my babies and could not write to you, I have counted upon you always. Everything that has come to me, good or bad, big or little, I have shared with you in my thoughts. Only—I did not realize it."
"That," he said quietly, "is marriage. Your mother realized it. She knew when you were only a child of the tie between us—But she and I thought that I must keep away from you until the accident of time corrected itself. You see we have been sent into this incarnation rather far apart."