"I suppose," she hazarded, "that it's awfully dull and tiresome, though,
until you get way up to the top."

That roused him. "It's awfully dull when you do get to the top, or
what's called the top--being a client caretaker with the routine law
business of a few big corporations and rich estates going through your
office like grist through a mill. I can't imagine anything duller than
that. That's supposed to be the big reward, of course. That's the
bundle of hay they dangle in front of your nose to keep you trotting
straight along without trying to see around your blinders."

He was out of his chair now, tramping up and down the room. "You're not
supposed to discover that it's interesting. You're pretty well spoiled
for their purposes if you do. The thing to bear in mind, if you're going
to travel their road, is that a case is worth while in a precise and
unalterable ratio to the amount of money involved in it. If you question
that axiom at all seriously, you're lost. That's what happened to me."

He pulled up with a jerk, looked at her and laughed. "If my sister
Frederica were here," he explained, "she would warn you, out of a long
knowledge of my conversational habits, that now was the time for you to
ask me,--firmly, you know,--if I'd been to see Maude Adams in this new
thing of hers, or something like that. In Frederica's absence, I suppose
it's only fair to warn you myself. Have you been to see it? I haven't."

She smiled in a sort of contented amusement and let that do for an
answer to his question about Maude Adams. Then the smile transmuted
itself into a look of thoughtful gravity and there was a long silence
which, though it puzzled him, he made no move to break.