Sublime

Even now, at seventeen—high school graduate, mistress of her fate, and a ten-dollar-a-week file clerk in the very Forty-seventh Street lawyer’s office where Helen was a fifteen-dollar-a-week typist—as she sat on Helen’s bed and watched Helen primp for a party, the memory hurt. There was no consolation in the thought that not now and not then would

As an adult, Holm would top out at 5'11", downright Lilliputian for a high jumper. In a sport that requires raising one’s center of mass as high as possible, starting with a high center of mass is an enormous advantage.

After winning Wimbledon in 1920 at the late age of twenty-seven, Tilden did not lose a match in the next six years—a feat of domination that is inconceivable in modern tennis. Like a slugger batting a thousand for six seasons.

Back at the office, Max managed to dictate the rest of his letters just before the tennis champion Helen Wills Moody strode in.