legal news was printed, and never overlooked a paragraph. And at last
she found it--just the bare statement "Judgment affirmed." Rodney, she
knew, had represented the appellant. He was beaten.

For a moment the thing bruised her like a blow. She had never succeeded
in entertaining, seriously, the possibility that it could end otherwise
than in victory for him. She read it again and made sure. She remembered
the names of both parties to the suit, and she knew which side Rodney
was on. There couldn't be any mistake about it. And the certainty
weighed down her spirits with a leaden depression.

And then, all at once, in the indrawing of a single breath, she saw it
differently. Now that it had happened--and she couldn't help its
happening--didn't it give her, after all, the very opportunity she
wanted? She remembered what he had said the night he had turned her out
of his office. He wasn't sick or discouraged. He was in an intellectual
quandary that couldn't be solved by having his hand held or his eyes
kissed.

She saw now, that that had been just enough. She couldn't help him out
of his intellectual quandaries--yet. But under the discouragement and
lassitude of defeat, couldn't she help him? She remembered how many
times she had gone to him for help like that. In panicky moments when
the new world she had been transplanted into seemed terrible to her; in
moments when she feared she had made hideous mistakes; and, most
notably, during the three or four days of an acute illness of her
mother's, when she had been brought face to face with the monstrous,
incredible possibility of losing her, how she had clung to him, how his
tenderness had soothed and quieted her--how his strength and steady
confidence had run through her veins like wine!