At half past four, the oldest judge, who sat in the middle, interrupted again to tell Rodney, with what seemed to Rose brutally bad manners, what time it was.

“If you can finish your argument in fifteen minutes, Mr. Aldrich, we’ll hear you out.  If it’s going to take longer than that, the Court will adjourn till to-morrow morning.”

“I don’t think I shall want more than fifteen minutes,” said Rodney, and he went on again.

And, presently, he just stopped talking and began stacking up his notes.  The oldest judge mumbled something, everybody stood up and the three stiff formidable figures filed out by a side door.  It was all over.

But nothing had happened!

Rose had been looking forward, you see, to a driving finish; to a dramatic summoning of reserves, a mighty onslaught.  And at the end of it, as from the umpire at a ball game, to a decision.  She had expected to leave the court room in the blissful knowledge of Rodney’s victory or the tragic acceptance of his defeat.  In her surprise over the failure of this climax to materialize, she almost neglected to make her escape before he discovered her there.

One practical advantage she had gained out of what was, on the whole, a rather unsatisfactory afternoon.  When she had gone home and changed into the sort of frock she thought he’d like and come down-stairs in it in answer to his shouted greeting from the lower hall, she didn’t say, as otherwise she would have done, “How did it come out, Roddy?  Did you win?”

In the light of her newly-acquired knowledge, she could see how a question of that sort would irritate him.  Instead of that, she said:  “You dear old boy, how dog tired you must be!  How do you think it went?  Do you think you impressed them?  I bet you did.”

And not having been rubbed the wrong way by a foolish question, he held her off with both hands for a moment, then hugged her up and told her she was a trump.

“I had a sort of uneasy feeling,” he confessed, “that after last night—­the way I threw you out of my office, fairly, I’d find you—­tragic.  I might have known I could count on you.  Lord, but it’s good to have you like this!  Is there anywhere we have got to go?  Or can we just stay home?”

He didn’t want to flounder through an emotional morass, you see.  A firm smooth-bearing surface, that was what, for every-day use, he wanted her to provide him with; lightly given, casual caresses that could be accepted with a smile, pleasantness, a confident security that she wouldn’t be “tragic.”  And on the assumption that she couldn’t walk beside him on the main path of his life, it was just and sensible.  But it wasn’t good enough for Rose.