So he affected to consider the determination taken once for all, and fell to work in a dull rage of resentment. But when that fire burned out for lack of fuel, as all fires will, another and a holier was kindled in its place. At thirty a man does not fall in love at first sight, and in the beginning Dorothy Langford had figured in his thoughts of her only as an incarnation of pure womanhood. But latterly the point of view had been changing. She was no longer a type; she was the eidolon of the type. Brant asked himself a blunt question, and the ink dried between the nibs of his ruling pen while the question waited for its answer. The windows of the map room looked northward, and he got down from the high stool to stand with his hands behind him, gazing abstractedly across the railway yards toward the quarter of the town he had come to know best. “You have spun the web for me, little girl, and I couldn’t break away from you now if the heavens fall,” he said, letting his thought slip into speech. “I have just about one chance in a hundred of being able to carry it off without being found out, and I am going to take that chance; I’d take it if it were only one in a thousand.” The outer office door opened and shut, but Brant heard it not. For which cause he started guiltily when some one behind him said: “You have a fine view from here, Mr. Brant.” Brant spun around as one shot, and found himself confronting the father of the young woman whom he had been apostrophizing. For a moment even the commonplaces deserted him, but presently he recovered himself sufficiently to join rather sheepishly in the laugh at his own expense. “I was fairly caught,” he admitted. “How long have you been here?” “Not long enough to hear any secrets,” replied the judge. “You were saying something about ‘one in a thousand’ when I came in, and it struck me as being a very natural remark for a young man in a trance.” “It is one of my bad habits,” Brant confessed--“talking to myself, I mean. It began when I was a little fellow and lacked playmates.” “It is a very common habit. I once knew an attorney who had it in a most peculiar form. His office was adjoining mine, and he would lock the door and discuss a case with himself. We used to laugh at him a good bit, but he was always the best-prepared man in court.” All of which was quite beside the mark, as Brant well knew; but he made courteous answer, having it in mind to let his visitor pick his own way through the generalities. This the judge seemed to find very difficult, since he made several false starts before coming finally to the object of his visit. Brant set the hesitancy down to pardonable family pride, and stood ready to help when he should be given the chance. At length the judge came to the point and waded reluctantly into the domestic pool.