“I’ll be ready in just a moment,” he told her, and passed quickly behind the green baize door that gave into his private office.
All this was as it had been many times before.
Azalea caught her breath in two fluttering little sighs. That was over; and without any of the embarrassments she had dreaded. It had been quite easy—almost disappointingly easy—but altogether fine. That was what she had prayed that Dilling should remain; it was what she knew he would always remain—fine!
At the same time, she wondered how he felt, exactly what minute little thoughts had come to him since he stood between the dull, fringed portieres and stared at her, stunned, yet with the light of a sublime revelation dawning in his eyes. She wondered with a hot stab of pain, if he felt himself duped, humbugged, betrayed.
She visualised the brief and pregnant scene again, imagining—or was it divining?—the thought that must have come to him as his eyes held hers in that sudden bond of understanding. “This is a piece of staggering news to me,” he must have said. “I am taken at a disadvantage . . . emotionally naked . . . but you knew . . . you knew . . .”
And she saw herself mutely admitting the accusation, but with sadness, as a mother might have felt when some disturbing information could no longer be withheld from the child she loved. And she wondered if he suffered at losing the false serenity in which he had been living.
Did he resent the age-old wisdom that enabled her to see, while he groped and stumbled, fatuous in his blindness? Did he feel humiliation?
On her desk the buzzer sounded. His summons. For a moment, Azalea sat quite still, looking at the little instrument that had called her in exactly the same way countless times before. And yet, not quite the same. To-day, there was something different. No, it would never be the same again.
As she gathered up her notebook, pencil and a sheaf of papers, her heart ached for him.
“Why,” she asked herself, rebelliously, “why must the cup of knowledge be so bitter? Why must the coming of truth be so difficult and hard to bear?”