“But will you never open your eyes to the radiant truth that a great love is not a drain but a reservoir, a source of supply? It enlarges one’s power and stimulates creation. Did not every conspicuous figure in history have his feminine complement, and is not at least a part of his achievement credited to the stimulation of an overmastering love?”
Dilling was not so sure. Average and sub-average persons, wholly unable to apprehend the subtle forces of will and intellect behind a great achievement, accept it with dull simplicity and dismiss it with a word of praise. But average and sub-average persons experiencing the driving power of emotion in varied degrees think themselves capable of understanding a sublime passion and therefore place it—perhaps unconsciously—ahead of intellectual accomplishment. In fine, we bring others down to our own level, a fact that explains why “human interest” and “heart interest” make a wider appeal than things that live and move and have their being on the higher plane of mind and spirit.
“I doubt it,” he said, answering Hebe’s question. “I doubt, for example, that Parnell’s skill in leadership depended upon the dashing Kitty O’Shea, or that Nelson would have failed at Trafalgar save for Lady Hamilton.”
“Do you mean that no particular woman is necessary to a man, or that emotional relationship between two persons of opposite sexes is over-estimated?”
“Either, and both,” laughed Dilling, and rose. “But I really must find my wife. She will think I have deserted her, and, anyway, late hours are forbidden in our house. Shall we go down?”
But Hebe held him.
“Just a moment,” she begged. “I can’t allow you to leave me with a wrong impression. Oh, I know quite well how my conduct to-night must appear in your eyes—your blind eyes, Raymond, and it is not a sense of prudishness that impels me to explain that I do not throw myself at you for a narrow, personal satisfaction. It is true that I love you, but I love the big You, the public man, the orator, the statesman, and I have a supreme longing to see you attain greater honours and bring greater glory to Canada. To achieve this, I am firmly convinced that a closed door in your nature must be opened. You are like a man working in artificial light. He can see, yes—but he attains results through greater strain than is immediately apparent and, therefore, his season of usefulness is lessened. There is sunshine, Raymond, and in its radiance, much of what was work becomes play. Love is my sunshine and is a miraculous creative force. With your frail body, you must draw power from an outside source, Raymond, and what other reservoir is there but Love? Listen, dear, just a moment more,” she cried, tightening her arms about him. “I would rather see you love some other woman than not love at all, for I know that the awakening of your soul would be Canada’s great gain. And now,” she concluded, rising, “will you kiss me before you go?”
Dilling hesitated, and in that instant’s delay a step sounded on the stair and a gentle tattoo beat upon the door.
“Come in,” cried Hebe, crossly. “Oh, Uncle Rufus, we were just going down!”