Jim begins to understand the emotional significance of their differences, of their experi ences together, and of his rich childhood. Tracing his steps on the road that he and Antonia traveled as children, Jim has "the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man's experience is. For Antonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past" (372)