Unaware, the great experience, the thing for which she had blindly groped, had come upon her; not with a sudden leap to which her nature leaped in response, but with a slow, quiet, irresistibly gathering force, like a great stream that bore her upon its breast, without volition, without struggle, toward some bourne of which she had no knowledge. And no fear.

Joan might have said with Browning:

"Let us be unashamed of soul ...

Is it in our control To love or not to love?"

It is always the body that suggests shame; and the body had ever been a negligible part of Joan's make-up. She felt as independent of it now as if she were already spirit, floating about in s.p.a.ce--always with this certainty of meeting there another spirit, however, and mingling with it.

This spiritual mingling was a matter she never discussed with Nikolai--the only thing in the universe, perhaps, which they did not discuss. Theirs was an understanding too close for words, and beyond words.... But sometimes, when Joan remembered that she had once feared love, believing it one of those things that are better done without, she smiled to herself; an inner, brooding smile that gave the final touch of the chisel to her features, and made her much sought by painters.

Paris seemed more than usual that year the rendezvous for people who had won distinction in the arts and sciences, and who came to render their patron city in her hour of need what a.s.sistance was in their power.

Among these people Nikolai was made welcome with an eagerness, and even a deference, which delighted Joan, and a little surprised her; for his simplicity made it easy to forget that he belonged among famous folk as a matter of right.

On his account, perhaps a little on her own as well, Joan also was welcomed by them. She was not at all abashed by the company of greatness, having inherited from Richard Darcy the nave conviction that the best was good enough for her; and moreover she found among them the keen power of enjoyment that invariably accompanies high mental development. She had long since suspected, and now proved, that only thinking people know how to play.

It was a great relief to her, just then, to be with strangers who accepted her entirely at face-value, with neither curiosity nor demand.

An unquestioning, simple freedom prevailed in these upper reaches which Joan fancied might be dangerous enough (unless it had the effect of putting people, as it were, on honor). n.o.body enquired whether she had a husband, for instance, or where he was. It seemed quite sufficient that she was the young friend of Stefan Nikolai; "_Spiritosa e simpatica_,"

as a certain great Italian tragedienne p.r.o.nounced her. Their relations were taken as a matter of course. The two were always included together in whatever plans were afoot, and Joan noticed other such companionships among them which pa.s.sed equally unquestioned. She was nominally under the care of Lady Arbuthnot; but that widely experienced n.o.blewoman displayed a carelessness of chaperonage that would have caused hair to rise on the head of, say, Mrs. Carmichael.

Joan was at perfect liberty to spend with her friend every hour that either could spare from the day's duties, and did so. "Why not?"

appeared to be the att.i.tude of a company which concerns itself more with matters of the spirit than of the flesh....

In Louisville speculation was once more rife and lurid, sharing interest only with the war headlines and with Joan Blair's latest letter to the magazines.

"We appear to have been nourishing Genius in our bosom unawares!"

remarked the Jabberwocks to each other; not altogether pleased, as is the immemorial way of friendship.

"I don't know why you were unaware," commented Emily Carmichael, quietly. "She has always shown every earmark of genius, even to neglecting the best husband that ever lived!"

The Jabberwocks exchanged surprised and meaningful glances.

CHAPTER LV

Into the busy abstraction of Joan's Paris life came presently one of her step-mother's rare letters. It was a round, childish, yet curiously firm scrawl written on lavender paper (Effie May having abandoned pink effects in honor of her widowhood), which for some reason brought home to Joan her father's little city so clearly that she could almost smell it; a distinctive summer smell compounded of hot asphalt, blossoming ailanthus trees, and a suggestion of the glue-factory.

Folks here are making bets as to whether you ever mean to come back again,

(wrote Effie May).

And why should you? is what I say. I keep thinking how pleased Major would be to have you hobn.o.bbing with lady earls and famous characters and high life generally. It's just where you belong, and so did he.

Archie comes to see me real often, and he don't look so poorly as he did at first. He's got him up a regiment, mostly Y. M. C.

A. fellows and a few old boys with stummicks and bald heads, and I hear they drill real cute. He goes horseback riding a good deal with the Carmichael girl, too, and I guess it does him good. Ellen says he seems more peckish for his meals.

(Here Joan laid down the letter, thoughtfully. "Emily!--Well, why not?

She always did like him. I'm glad," she mused. She certainly was not going to begrudge her husband the freedom she asked for herself.)

Ellen comes in every day to look after things for me, now that I'm laid up. She don't like me any better than she used to, and I expect she just thinks it's a family duty, but I'm glad to have her anyhow. I keep n.i.g.g.e.r help now, the white ones being so hard to get, and I'm not the hand with them your father was.

I never saw any one get as much out of n.i.g.g.e.rs as Major could!--out of white folks, too, for that matter, couldn't he?

Of course I'm not so sick as the doctors make out (they got to earn the money somehow), but it's hard to sleep sitting up this way, and sometimes at night I get to thinking. So I made a will. I knew you'd never touch Calloway's money with a ten-foot pole, but I thought maybe you wouldn't mind seeing it got spent right. I want it to go to one of those shelters you told about in the magazine, for little French girls with babies and no husbands. Seems only fair, when I've had more than my share of husbands and no kids.

Paris seems awful far away, and I guess I better let you off that promise you made me to see that I didn't get laid out with no corset on. They probably couldn't get a corset on me now, anyway, I'm that fleshy. Not that I'm ordering me a coffin for anytime real soon, dearie! but sometimes at night a person gets to thinking.

Joan was rather startled by this letter, and sent for Nikolai.

"What do you make of it, Stefan? That part: 'It's hard to sleep sitting up this way'--what does it mean?"

"I am afraid," he said gravely, "it means something serious--Advanced heart-disease, probably. A woman of her weight would be liable to it."

Joan gave an exclamation of dismay. In that moment she discovered that she not only did not dislike Effie May; she was fond of her. The thought of never again seeing the vulgar, cheery, friendly soul was unexpectedly distressing.

"Poor woman!--all alone there with her 'n.i.g.g.e.r help!' and Ellen sourly doing her duty--Or is it _my_ duty?" She was not thinking entirely of Effie May.... "Stefan"--her face blanched. "She was my father's wife.

She tried her best to be a mother to me. I owe her a good deal. Has the time come to repay it? Does this mean--Oh, Stefan, do you think this means I ought to go back? I've been so happy here, so useful! For the first time in my life I have felt that I really 'belonged.' These people who are doing things--"

She gazed at him beseechingly. It gradually dawned upon her that what she dreaded so to leave was not these people who were doing things, not that larger, freer life to which Nikolai had given her the key; not even the Spirit that met her Spirit there in s.p.a.ce. It was Nikolai himself, the man, the comrade--the lover.

Her whole being seemed to rush out to meet the need that suddenly gazed at her from Nikolai's eyes....

"Stefan," she said very low, "_must_ I go back?"

For a moment he did not answer. Then he said, his voice not quite under control "You expect me to decide that for you? My dear, you ask too much."

He took his hat and left; but Joan knew that he had decided.

They walked up and down the _quai_ for an hour or so before the gangway was drawn in. Joan always afterwards remembered what they said, as one recalls the least syllable of the dying. There was a sense of finality about this parting, against which she struggled in vain.

She filled her eyes with him as if she had never seen him before, and would not again. She noted little physical details which had hitherto escaped her--the fine cameo cutting of his features, the long, sensitive, expressive hands, the air he shared with many Europeans of belonging to an older, more finished race than her own. In his calm impa.s.sivity there was a suggestion of Slavic fatalism, combined with the tragic patience of the Jew. Only his eyes smoldered with an unquenchable spark that flamed to hers.

She knew that the Romance which had always eluded her was here at her side, in the person of this perfect comrade, this shadowy, insistent influence in her life which was about to withdraw into the shadows again. Perhaps she understood, too, that Romance to remain Romance must be elusive. Seized and held, it changes into something else. Yet she tried to cling to it.

"You will be right here waiting on this spot when I come back, won't you, Stefan?--For I _will_ come back," she exclaimed as he did not answer. "Say that you know I will!"

"I know that you will do whatever seems to you right."

She made a mutinous face at him. "That's more than I know! I'm much more likely to do whatever seems to me nice--Oh, Stefan, why will you persist in believing in me always, no matter how badly I behave?" Lightly as she spoke, her eyes were fixed on him, telling him consciously what her lips could not utter.

He answered at one of his usual tangents. "Do you not know that every splinter of a genuine Cremona violin vibrates to the bow on as true a tone as did the unbroken instrument?"

"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.