"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." "You kept away too long, Stefan!" "I know. But what does it matter?" He spoke half to himself, with his little shrug. "This manifestation or the next--we shall not be apart always." "No, no!" she cried, catching at his hand. "That is too ethereal, too mystic for me--I can't bear it, Stefan! I want the people I love with me _now_, in this 'manifestation,' as you call it, where I can talk with them, and touch them, and hold on to them--I am not all spirit. I thought I was, but--I'm not. Oh, my dear, aren't you human _at all_?" He did not reply; and Joan, looking at him through swimming tears, saw that it was because he could not. She dropped his hand. "Forgive me!" she whispered. "I will try to climb up to you--since you will not come down to me.... But you must help me." "I will help," said Nikolai. They spoke a little later of Archie, who had been all the while at the back of their thoughts. Both knew it was to him she was returning, rather than to her step-mother. "You expect too much of him, Joan--you always expect too much of people. Try to take them as you find them. He is one of the many who think better with their hearts than with their heads." She commented with a faint smile, "My step-mother once told me that there was nothing in the world so dangerous as what she called 'bone-headedness.'" "Exactly!--especially to the bone-headed--Your Archie is no fool, however. There are perhaps fewer convolutions in his gray matter than in ours, that is all. He has made mistakes with his head, and will again. But with his heart--never." "You are not condoning," she asked slowly, "what Archie has done?" He answered after a little pause, "To me there seems nothing unforgivable, nothing utterly vicious, except selfishness. There is no self in Archie Blair. Not enough self."