How to preserve his poise as an independent character and at the same time avoid antagonism with some of his new friends had become interesting to Gordon Perry. He had reached a point where he had only to be quiescent in order to reap presently a rich harvest. His clear-headedness, his quickness, and his common sense had been recognized, and it was in the air that he was a rising man in his profession. People of importance had taken him up. It was known that he had attended to certain matters for Paul Howard, from whom it was only one step to the source of many gigantic undertakings productive of fat fees. To the eye of shrewd observers in Benham he had only to go on as he had been going, and attend strictly to business, in order to emerge from the ranks of his brother lawyers, and become one of the small group which controlled the cream of the legal business of the city. Instead of bringing accident cases he would defend them for powerful corporations. Instead of conducting many small proceedings at an expense of vitality for which his clients could not afford and did not expect to pay adequately, he would be employed by banks and trust companies, would organize and reorganize railroads, be made the executor of large estates and the legal adviser of capitalists in financial schemes from which profits would accrue to him in the tens of thousands. It ought to be comparatively plain sailing. This was obvious to the man in question as well as to his contemporaries. He knew that his business was growing, and sundry rumors had reached him that he had been spoken of in inner circles as skilful and level-headed.