"To save his self-respect! Self-respect grows on what it feeds on, my dear, and I thought maybe if he was a judge"--he looked into the anxious eyes of his wife and went on--"that might hold him!" He rested his head on a hand and drew in a deep breath. "'Vanity, vanity,' saith the Preacher--'all is vanity!' And I thought I'd hitch it to something that might pull him out of the swamp! And I happened to know that he had a sneaking notion of running for Judge this fall, so I thought I'd slip up and help him." He sighed again and his tone changed. "I did it primarily for Laura," he said wearily, and: "Mother, we might as well face it." Mrs. Nesbit looked intently at her husband in understanding silence and asked: "Is it any one in particular, Jim--" He hesitated, then exclaimed: "Oh, I may be wrong, but somehow I don't like the air--the way that Mauling girl assumes authority at the office. Why, she's made me wait in the outer office twice now--for nothing except to show that she could!" "Yes, Jim--but what good will this judgeship do? How will it solve anything?" persisted the wife. The Doctor let his sigh precede his words: "The office will make him realize that the eyes of the community are on him, that he is in a way a marked man. And then the place will keep him busy and spur on his ambition. And these things should help." He looked tenderly into the worried face of his wife and smiled. "Perhaps we're both wrong. We don't know. Tom's young and--" He ended the sentence in a "Ho--ho--ho--hum!" and yawned and rose, leading the way up stairs. In the Van Dorn home a young wife was trying to define herself in the new relation to the community in which the evening's news had placed her. She had no idea of divorcing the judgeship from her life. She felt that marriage was a full partnership and that the judgeship meant much to her. She realized that as a judge's wife her life and her duties--and she was eager always to acquire new duties--would be different from her life and her duties as a lawyer's wife or a doctor's wife or a merchant's wife, for example. For Laura Van Dorn was in the wife business with a consuming ardor, and the whole universe was related to her wifehood. To her marriage was the development of a two-phase soul with but one will. As the young couple entered their home, the wife was saying: "Tom, isn't it fine to think of the good you can do--these poor folk in the Valley don't really get justice. And they're your friends. They always help you and father in the election, and now you can see that they have their rights. Oh, I'm so glad--so glad father did it. That was his way to show them how he really loves them."