"What?"
Chiun searched Remo's face hopefully. "You have me. Have I meant nothing to you, that you would kill yourself and deprive an old man of his last chance for atonement?"
"I don't owe you anything. Especially after that trick you pulled at the wedding."
"I saved you from a horror. Had you married what you thought was Mah-Li, the Dutchman would have revealed himself to you at a moment of great intimacy. I spared you that."
"You didn't know it was the Dutchman at the ceremony. Don't you take credit for that. Don't you dare take credit for that."
Chiun smiled to himself. Anger. Good. Remo was coming out of his depressed self-absorption.
"I do not claim to have prior knowledge of the deception, true," Chiun admitted. "But the good I did still stands. You cannot disagree with that."
"You always twist things around so that they turn out in your favor," Remo said.
"True," agreed Chiun. "After I lost my son, I learned to transform defeat into victory, errors into detours, not endings. I promised myself that I would never feel such bitter disappointment again in my life."
"I always wondered why you did some of the things you did. "
"Because I am Chiun," said the Master of Sinanju. "But do not think that because I did not know of the Dutchman's deception, my motives were selfish."
"Here we go again," said Remo bitterly. "Here's where you do it to me again. Okay, Chiun, give me your explanation. Tell me how wrecking my wedding was for my own good. And make it good, because if you don't convince me, I'm walking out of this place and you're never going to see me again. You understand? End of partnership. We're through."
Chiun drew himself up so that his sitting posture was perfect, the spine aligned with the pelvis and the head sitting square to the upper vertebrae.
"Remember this time a year ago, when you brought me back to Sinanju?" Chiun asked.
"You were sick. Or faking sickness. You wanted to come back to Sinanju for good."
"Faking or not," said Chiun, "you thought I lay near death. And in your grief, you sought solace. Do you remember your first meeting with Mah-Li?"
"Yeah. She wore a veil to hide her face because the other villagers thought she was ugly. They called her Mah-Li the Beast. She was gorgeous, but by the screwed-up ideals of Sinanju beauty, she was homely."
"When did you first fall in love with her?"
"Almost immediately. It was love at first sight."
"Yet you did not see her face on that first meeting. How could you love at first sight when you had no sight of her veiled face?"
"I don't know. It was her voice, the way she made me feel good all over. She was lonely, an orphan like me."
"Precisely," said Chiun.
"Precisely what?" Remo asked.
"You were lonely. You thought the Master of Sinanju-the only person you cared for in life-was dying. You reached out to the nearest person you saw to fill the void in your existence. "
"You'd better not be saying that I didn't love her."
"I am not saying that. Love is learned. This love at first sight is a Western concept. A rationalization of a necessary but inconvenient urge. How long did you know Mah-Li?"
"A few weeks. I don't know."
"Less than a month," said Chiun. "And you knew her only a day when you came to me to ask my blessing for your marriage. Yet a month later when I stole away from Sinanju in the night, you left your love-at-first-sight and followed me to America. And when I told you I intended to remain in America for a full year, did you return to your betrothed? No, you chose to remain with me."
"I was worried about you. I thought of Mah-Li every day. "
"Did you send for her? Did you say, 'Mah-Li, come to America where we will be wed'?"
"No," said Remo slowly. "I wanted to be married in Sinanju. "
"So you say. But I say that had you met in other circumstances, had Mah-Li been a Korean living in America and you passed her on the street, you would not have given her a second look. You thought I was dying and you found a Korean maid who, in her sweetness and intelligence, was appealing to you. And so you took her for your betrothed to fill the coming void. When my health miraculously improved, that void was healed and there was no need for her in your life."
"I loved her!" Remo shouted.
"You came to love her. You started to love her. You saw her as the fulfillment of your dream of happiness. But in truth, you barely knew her. This is why you did not cry at her funeral. I watched you, Remo. No tears fell from your face. There was anger, yes. But not true grief. In fact, she was nearly a stranger to you. Deny this if you dare."
"Her death hasn't sunk in yet," said Remo. "Hey, I loved her. "
"You loved the dream. You loved what Mah-Li represented to you-your silly white house and picket fence. I understood this even if you did not."
"And you think that gave you the right to bust up the wedding? That's lame, Chiun. Even for you. I'll be seeing you around," added Remo, heading for the door.
Remo stopped at the threshold with Chiun's next words.
"I interfered with your wedding because you had a daughter you did not know. If it was your wish to marry, I would not have stopped you, even believing as I did that it was a mistake. But you had to see your own child first. You had to confront the reality that you had caused life to be brought into the world and weigh your new responsibility against this fantasy of yours."
Remo stood at the doorway unmoving.
"The love you had felt for Jilda of Lakluun was a casualty of the Dutchman. Did you think that living in Sinanju would have protected Mah-Li from his wrath? That is a lesson you have learned in the bitterest way imaginable. Just as I learned one of my own long before you were born. "
"As soon as Jilda came back," Remo said weakly, "all my old feelings for her returned."
"Because now she represents your dream. And can you say whom you loved more, of these two women?"
"I never slept with Mah-Li, you know. I wanted to do it the old-fashioned way. Wait for the honeymoon."
"What are you saying? That because you had lain with one and not the other, you cannot compare them? That is unworthy of you, Remo. "
Remo shook his head. "No, it's not that. I was just thinking out loud. I don't know, I'm all confused. I've got to clear my head. I have decisions to make."
"Yes," said Chiun, climbing to his feet. "You have many decisions to make. Whether to live or to die. Whether to be a father or to walk away from fatherhood. Whether to continue as my pupil or to go your way. But either way you choose, Remo, you will have to walk through shit. For that is life."
Chiun stepped out into the cold night.
"I am going to my home," he said solemnly. "If you wish, you may come with me. There will be a fire."