He did not raise his eyes when she entered the room, but presently, he seemed to know that she was seated and ready.
“Taking up the matter of the Quebec Bridge,” he began, “is the report down from Council, yet?” Then, without waiting for an answer, “But first, are there any Imperial despatches?”
The routine of the morning progressed as usual. Reports to Council, petitions from small centres demanding votes from the Public Treasury out of all proportion to their possible returns, eternal complaints and criticisms from malcontents, applications for pensions from War Widows, enquiries from distracted mothers—all the departmental acta-diurna of a ministerial incumbency that had to be cleared away before he was free to undertake the pressing matters that fell to his especial talents to perform.
And he compelled his brain to function along its accustomed channels, while some inner chamber of his mind carried on a separate trend of thought—separate, and, at the same time, veiled, like the thinking that is part of a dream.
He wondered how Azalea felt, sitting there so composedly; and beautiful, like Lamb’s divinely plain Miss Kelly. Was there an element of pity, even contempt beneath her consistent consideration, for the man who was insentient to the message of his own heart? Dilling recoiled from the mawkish flavour of the phrase. He despised all sentimentality, and had he been called upon to debate the subject would have denied the heart the conspicuous place universally accorded it, in emotional relations between the sexes. Imbeciles and sensualists “fell in love”, because the world refuses to countenance the cruder, if more honest, passion. Dilling had never been in love—neither with Marjorie nor any other woman. Even now he refused to connect the term with Azalea. He had suddenly become aware of joy in her companionship, of his dependence upon the mental stimulation she provided, of a hitherto unsuspected peace in their spiritual communion. In her, he had found the priceless thing for which men seek throughout their lives—Understanding.
“I couldn’t get along without her,” he said to himself. “She understands me.” And having thus spoken, he could say no more. It was the highest tribute he could pay—the highest tribute any man can pay to woman.
With Azalea, he felt himself the man he wished to be; not smug and stodgily content, but rejoicing in the struggle towards an ideal which he believed was one that she approved.
Sitting opposite her, apparently engrossed in matters of a widely divergent nature, Dilling examined himself, detachedly. He had no desire to touch her . . . to cry to her, “I love you!” But the thought of losing her companionship, mental contact with her, produced a pain so intolerable that it dismayed him.
And in that flash of utter wretchedness, he saw how completely he was wedded to Azalea; how sublime was this cold, pure marriage of the spirit. With Marjorie, mental companionship was absolutely non-existent. They were bound together by duty, habit, and the intimacies permitted those who have accepted man-made ritual as final . . . and Divine. They had no need of one another. Fondness expressed the extent of his emotion, and for several years, he had realised that a fierce maternalism on her part was substitute for the rarer ecstasy of love.
He was as free from connubial fetters as it is given man to be. Marjorie was never exacting, but even so, Dilling was conscious of restriction, bondage. He wanted to be free!