But she did not smile. Evidently to her the spot on which Adrian sat was sacrosanct. The room was the Holy of Holies where mortal man put on immortality. Flippant comment sounded like blasphemy in her ears. She even grew somewhat impatient at our lingering in the august precincts, although they had not yet been consecrated by inspired labour. Their unblessed condition was obvious. On the large library table were a couple of brass candlesticks with fresh candles (Adrian could not work by electric light), a couple of reams of scribbling paper, an inkpot, an immaculate blotting pad, three virgin quill pens (it was one of Adrian's whimsies to write always with quills), lying in a brass dish, and an office stationery case closed and aggressively new. The sight of this last monstrosity, I thought, would play the deuce with my imagination and send it on a devastating tour round the Tottenham Court Road, but not having the artistic temperament and catching a glance of challenge from Doria, I forebore to make ignorant criticism.
In the bedroom while Barbara was putting on her veil and powdering her nose (this may be what grammarians call a hysteron proteron—but with women one never can tell)—Doria broke into confidences not meet for masculine ears.
"Oh, darling," she cried, looking at Barbara with great awe-stricken eyes, "you can't tell what it means to be married to a genius like Adrian. I feel like one of the Daughters of Men that has been looked upon by one of the Sons of God. It's so strange. In ordinary life he's so dear and human—responsive, you know, to everything I feel and think—and sometimes I quite forget he's different from me. But at others, I'm overwhelmed by the thought of the life going on inside his soul that I can never, never share—I can only see the spirit that conceived 'The Diamond Gate'—don't you understand, darling?—and that is even now creating some new thing of wonder and beauty. I feel so little beside him. What more can I give him beyond what I have given?"
Barbara took the girl's tense face between her two hands and smiled and kissed her.
"Give him," said she, "ammoniated quinine whenever he sneezes."
Then she laughed and embraced the Heavenly One's wife, who, for the moment, had not quite decided whether to feel outraged or not, and discoursed sweet reasonableness.
"I should treat your genius, dear, just as I treat my stupid old Hilary."
She proceeded to describe the treatment. What it was, I do not know, because Barbara refused to tell me. But I can make a shrewd guess. It's a subtle scheme which she thinks is hidden from me; but really it is so transparent that a babe could see through it. I, like any wise husband, make, however, a fine assumption of blindness, and consequently lead a life of unruffled comfort.
Whether Doria followed the advice I am not certain. I have my doubts. Barbara has never knelt by the side of her stupid old Hilary's chair and worshipped him as a god. She is an excellent wife and I've no fault to find with her; but she has never done that, and she is the last woman in the world to counsel any wife to do it. Personally, I should hate to be worshipped. In worship hours I should be smoking a cigar, and who with a sense of congruity can imagine a god smoking a cigar? Besides, worship would bore me to paralysis. But Adrian loved it. He lived on it, just as the new hand in a chocolate factory lives on chocolate creams. The more he was worshipped the happier he became. And while consuming adoration he had a young Dionysian way of inhaling a cigarette—a way which Dionysus, poor god, might have exhibited, had tobacco grown with the grape on Mount Cithaeron—and a way of exhaling a cloud of smoke, holier than the fumes of incense in the nostrils of the adorer, which moved me at once to envy and exasperation.