“She’s more than half responsible,” he told himself. “I couldn’t have achieved my present position by any process of reasoning alone.”
He looked over his crowded desk with a sensation of helplessness. How could any man, single-handed, clear that accumulation away? He wondered if other Members allowed their business to get into such a distressing tangle, and if they had better luck than he when a stenographer came in for a few hours, to reduce the congestion?
“It’s this eternal speech-making,” he reflected. “That’s what takes so much of my time. I wish . . .”
He left his chair and began to pace about the room, surrendering to an access of restlessness that was quite foreign to him. Azalea Deane . . . there was the solution! Why not? Why should she not come to him as a permanent assistant . . . a sort of private secretary?
“She could relieve me of a myriad minor duties,” he thought. “Foreign press . . . correspondence . . . research work . . . She’s amazingly accurate . . .” He smiled as he caught himself suppressing the familiar corollary, “for a woman!”
Yes, that was the solution! He would ask Azalea Deane to work with him. “We’ll get on famously together,” he thought. “She’s so quick to catch the drift of my intention. She really understands me.”
He sat down again, amused at the recollection of an original view expressed by Azalea in answer to Marjorie, who complained of Ottawa’s persistent misunderstanding.
“There’s no cause for distress in being misunderstood,” she had said. “It’s the opposite condition that we should dread! Imagine one’s stupidity, covetousness and smallness of spirit being laid bare! Unthinkable, isn’t it? You mustn’t forget, my dear Marjorie, that being misunderstood works both ways, and through imperfect understanding we are frequently credited with motives and qualities that are quite as flattering as we could wish. Heaven forfend that I should ever be thoroughly understood!”
Dilling applauded her and reminded his wife that if men were compelled to write their thoughts and wear them as phylacteries on their foreheads, few, indeed, would carry themselves bravely in public.
“And why should they do that, dear?” Marjorie enquired, her pansy eyes clouded with perplexity.