"Well, John Regis, you must think you are still a young man, keeping your office at the top of this ladder staircase," she complained, raising her handkerchief and dabbing her face.
"Come in, Susan, and take this chair by the window," said the Judge. Rising from his desk and coming forward, he conducted her elegantly to the chair.
"It's forty years since I was here," she said, looking about her, "and you've not changed a thing. You are scarcely changed yourself, John."
"The man is changed, Susan. Forty years make more difference in a man than they do in things," he answered gently.
"The same books, all so thick and awful looking. I remember that day I thought you must be the wisest man in the world—to know all that was in them."
"I didn't know, and I don't know yet," he put in, smiling.
"The same chairs, the same brown prints on the wall. And that little vase, isn't it the one you had on your desk that day?" she asked, bending forward to look at it more closely.
"The very same. You put a rose into it that day, do you remember?"
"No, but I do remember that I was in love with you, John. A woman of sixty may admit that now!" she laughed.
"I wish you had admitted it then. I tried hard enough to win you, Susan. We should have been a team!"