"Oh, she does confidential work for you? I thought you said she was
incompetent."

He, the expert cross-examiner, had to admire her skill at that high
science and art. "I felt sorry for her," he said. "She seemed such a
forlorn little creature."

She laughed with a constrained attempt at raillery. "I never should have
suspected you of such weakness. To give confidential things to a forlorn
little incompetent, out of pity."

He was irritated, distinctly. The whole thing was preposterous. It
reminded him of feats of his own before a jury. By clever questioning,
Josephine had made about as trifling an incident as could be imagined
take on really quite imposing proportions. There was annoyance in his
smile as he said:

"Shall I send her up to see you? You might find it amusing, and maybe
you could do something for her."

Josephine debated. "Yes," she finally said. "I wish you would send
her--" with a little sarcasm--"if you can spare her for an hour or so."

"Don't make it longer than that," laughed he. "Everything will stop
while she's gone."

It pleased him, in a way, this discovery that Josephine had such a
common, commonplace weakness as jealousy. But it also took away
something from his high esteem for her--an esteem born of the lover's