Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/45

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to think at the same time of his humbler ones with any sort of disdain. "No, thank God!" And he seized and thumbed those documents. Beloved cases! They represented, each one of them, a cause in which his instinctive passion for justice had been enlisted.

"Justice!" he breathed reverently and was in rather an exalted state. Yielding to this exaltation he turned to the Code and to the oath which he had taken upon his admission to the bar.

"That's it," he exclaimed, and thumped the page in his enthusiasm. "That's my job. I've been lazy; that's what's been the matter with me. I took the little cases and as few as I could. I'm going after the big ones now and as many as I can get. Not that I'll turn my back on the little fellows either. But—hooray!" He stood up and stretched himself. It was great to feel he was getting into the fight again—the really worth-while fight to make the biggest and most useful man of himself that he could.

Clayton had prophesied to him that some day he would wake up with a bump, and, lo, he had done it in that self-same day, and the feeling was wonderful! Glorious! No peace-time slacker he, from this on! If only—if only this waking up were real and as worthy as it seemed . . . for he was still unaware that he had been subtly changed, that one single touch of the personality of Miss Billie Boland had wrought a mysterious alchemy in him. He thought it was something she had said, not something that she was, which had so stimulated him.

If it had been suggested to him that he was already in love with Billie Boland, or that he would ever be, he would have jeered at the idea and at himself. Since