"If I'd had the rights you men keep from us I'd never have done them!" she retorted quickly.
"I don't know," he replied, wagging his head and smiling. "Having rights, including the ballot, would not change the nature of a woman! Tell me, Susan, have I escaped the scrapbooks? I've wondered many times if you were keeping record of me, too."
"You never did—anything I could put in. And if you had——" she hesitated.
"Would you have pasted it down against me?" he finished.
"I don't know. I'm glad I wasn't tempted. How have you kept yourself so aloof all these years, John—so far above the furious issues of our times?"
"Not above, not above, my dear," he objected; "I've been busy. The law is a legal profession, not an illegal one, like politics."
They looked at each other and laughed, then the Judge added:
"And it may be I was afraid of your famous scrapbooks!"
"You were never afraid of anything," she returned.
"Yes, I am. I'm afraid of something now," he answered, flipping the pages of some papers which lay upon his desk. "I'm an old man holding in my hands a fuse which I must light presently, and I dread the consequences."