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“Your father believed in me–from the ground up. We understood each other, he and I. You’ve learned a lot in the last year and a half, T. A. Junior-that-was, but there’s one thing you haven’t mastered. When will you learn to believe in Emma McChesney?”

She was out of the office before he had time to answer, leaving him standing there.

In the dusk of a late winter evening just three weeks later, a man paused at the door of the unlighted office marked “Mrs. McChesney.” He looked about a moment, as though dreading detection. Then he opened the door, stepped into the dim quiet of the little room, and closed the door gently after him. Everything in the tiny room was quiet, neat, orderly. It seemed to possess something of the character of its absent owner. The intruder stood there a moment, uncertainly, looking about him.

Then he took a step forward and laid one hand on the back of the empty chair before the closed desk. He shut his eyes and it seemed that he felt her firm, cool, reassuring grip on his fingers as they clutched the wooden chair. The impression was so strong that he kept his eyes shut, and they were still closed when his voice broke the silence of the dim, quiet little room.

“Emma McChesney,” he was saying aloud, “Emma McChesney, you great big, fine, brave, wonderful woman, you! I believe in you now! Dad and I both believe in you.”