What heightened this feeling was that just as she caught herself smiling a little, down inside, over his callow absurdity, she reflected that a year ago they had been equals; that, as far as actual intelligence went, he was no doubt her equal to-day—­her superior, perhaps.  He’d gone on studying and she hadn’t.  Except for the long-circuited sex attraction that Doctor Randolph had been talking about last night, he was as capable of being an intellectual companion to her husband as she was.  That idea stung the red of resolution into her cheeks.  She would study law.  She’d study it with all her might!

She was successful in her project of slipping into the rear of the court room without attracting her husband’s attention, and for two hours and a half, she listened with mingled feelings, to his argument.  A good part of the time she was occupied in fighting off, fiercely, an almost overwhelming drowsiness.  The court room was hot of course, the glare from the skylight pressed down her eyelids; she hadn’t slept much the night before.  And then, there was no use pretending that she could follow her husband’s reasoning.  Listening to it had something the same effect on her as watching some enormous, complicated, smooth-running mass of machinery.  She was conscious of the power of it, though ignorant of what made it go, and of what it was accomplishing.

The three stolid figures behind the high mahogany bench seemed to be following it attentively, though they irritated her bitterly, sometimes, by indulging in whispered conversations.  Toward the end, though, as Rodney opened the last phase of his argument, one of them, the youngest—­a man with a thick neck and a square head—­hunched forward and interrupted him with a question; evidently a penetrating one, for the man sitting across the table from Rodney looked up and grinned, and interjected a remark of his own.

“I simply followed the cases cited in Aldrich on Quasi Contracts,” he said.  “I have a copy of the work here, in case Mr. Aldrich didn’t bring one along himself, which I’d be glad to submit to the Court.”

Rose gasped.  It was his own book they were quoting against him.

“I propose to show,” said Rodney, “if the Court please, that an absolutely vital distinction is to be made between the cases cited in the section of Aldrich on Quasi Contracts, which my honorable opponent refers to, and the case before the Court.”

Then the other judges spoke up.  They knew the cases, it appeared, and didn’t want to look at the book, but it was clear that they were skeptical about the distinction.  For five minutes the formal argument was lost in swift flashing phrases in which everybody took a part.  Rodney was defending himself against them all.  And Rose, in an agony because she couldn’t understand it, was reminded, grotesquely enough, of the Gentleman of France, or some other of the sword-and-cloak heroes of her girlhood, defending the head of the stairway against the simultaneous assault of half a dozen enemies.  And then suddenly it was over.  The judges settled back again, the argument went on.