Joan told him then reluctantly of something she had never before mentioned: her final incredible scene with her husband. She was curiously ashamed of that scene, as though it were she who had betrayed herself, instead of Archie. "Should you not call that a mistake of the heart?" But Nikolai did not appear to be particularly shocked by it. "I had no idea," he commented, "that Blair was so good an actor." "An actor!--You think that scene was not genuine?" "I think, in fact I know, that your husband would hesitate to sacrifice nothing to what he believed your happiness; even your respect--I love that man," he said simply. "And so do you, Joan. Otherwise he would have been powerless to hurt you." Her eyes widened. She asked, as so many before her have asked, "Is it possible to love--two people at once?" "Two? A dozen--a hundred! Does a mother love two children at once?--Surely that depends upon the stage of the soul's development." "But always one best," she said quite fiercely. "Always one best," he repeated.... The parting had come. Staring at him desperately, she saw in his eyes a depth of pain and loneliness that made her own for the moment insignificant. So much of his life was done; so much of hers, after all, only beginning. "Oh, my dear, my dear!" she cried in a sort of bewilderment. "What is it all about? Is there a purpose somewhere in this muddle of things? Why do you say it is not good for people like us to be happy, when others go to the end of their days in calm security? I do not want any--wicked things, Stefan! I only want to be with you always. To take care of you if you are sick, to mend your clothes, and make you comfortable, and--love you. I want us to grow old together, not alone. Oh, my dear, all your life you have been alone; and I can't bear it!--What is the good of this thing that has waked in me at last, if I am not to use it?" "You are," he said steadily. "Emotion to be safe must, _must_ translate itself into action." "But how, how? By doing for others, you are going to say--but it's such a thankless task, Stefan! A red-blooded woman like me to take to altruism, as some take to drugs!--Why must some of us live so intensely, so consciously, only to be denied again and again the fulfilment that we crave? Sinking our lives into those of lesser people, always of lesser people!" He answered gently, "'_Car je suis le Cobzar._'--It is time you understood.... You know what a Cobzar is?" She shook her head; and he told her.