“You are so good,” she responded gratefully, “so good”; and she was speaking sincerely.

With his casual gaze, which seemed to turn inward, fixed on the ceiling above her head, he invited her confidence by a few perfectly chosen expressions of comprehension and sympathy.  The acuteness and activity of his mental processes delighted her while he questioned her.  After the slovenly methods of Madame, after the loose reasoning and the muddled thinking of all the women she met in the course of her work, there was a positive pleasure in following the exactness and inflexibility of his logic.  His reasoning was orderly, neat, elastic, without loose ends or tangled skeins to unravel, and she felt again, while she listened to him, the confidence which had come to her as soon as she entered his office.  He was efficiency incarnate, and from her childhood up she had respected efficiency.  In an hour, in less time than it had taken her to tell her story, he had lifted the weight from her shoulders, had mastered the details of Madame’s intricate problems, and had outlined the terms by which Gabriella could accept the old woman’s offer without placing herself under financial obligations.  Her pride, he had discerned at a glance, shrank from obligation, and he was as alert to save her pride as he was to make a good bargain with Madame.

“It’s a good thing.  It’s good business.  Don’t think I’m losing for a minute,” he said as she rose to go, and she felt that some secret delicacy, the last feeling she would have attributed to him, was prompting his words.

“I can’t tell you what a relief it is to talk to you,” she said, holding out her hand while she hesitated between the desk and the door.  “I can’t even begin to tell you how grateful I am.  I haven’t had any one to advise me since I left Richmond, and it is such a comfort”

“Well, I’ll give you the best advice in my power.  I’ll give you the very best,” he replied as frankly as if he were discussing his gift to the church.  “What’s more, I’ll think it over a bit while I’m at the Hot Springs, and talk to you about it when I come back.  I suppose I can always get you on the telephone, can’t I?”

His manner was still casual and business-like, and it did not change by so much as a shade when he moved a step nearer and put his arm about her waist.  If he had taken down his hat or lighted a cigar, he would probably have performed either action with the same air of automatic efficiency; and she realized, in the very instant of her amazement, that his manner was merely an authoritative expression of his power.  What astonished her most in the incident, after all, was not the judge’s share in it, but the vividness and coolness of her own mental impressions.  She was not frightened, she was not even disturbed, she was merely disgusted.  Never before had she understood so clearly the immeasurable distance that divided the Gabriella of seventeen years ago from the Gabriella