The words of the psalmist flashed across Dilling’s mind and he murmured, “ ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.’ If God can pour strength into a frail vessel, may He pour it generously into me.”
There was a light tap on the door, and Azalea entered the room.
Dilling stared at her without speaking. He had never attached much importance to coincidences. They were, he thought, significant only in the world of fiction. When they occurred in reality, they only emphasised the incoherency of the substance. But Azalea’s coming was like an answer to prayer. He could think of nothing to say.
“Marjorie told me you had not come home,” she began, “and I thought that perhaps the work—Why, what is it?” Her tone changed. “What is the matter?”
Briefly, he told her. “They have given me until to-morrow morning to make up my mind.”
“Perhaps I’d better go,” she said.
“No, no! Stay and help me. I don’t feel as if I could fight this thing out alone.”
Heavily, he threw himself into a chair. His thinness, his pallor, his general air of frailness, made Azalea faint with pity for him. Sitting in the half-tone of departing daylight, his hair seemed silvered with frost, his face was drawn, his body sagged like that of an old man.
“What do you think I should do?” he asked her.
“What you know is right.”