"No, we should not. We are both headstrong. We should have obstructed each other. I married the right man." "I suppose so. Certainly you never could have henpecked me into Congress the way you did Jim Walton! Why did you do it?" he asked, showing the ends of a sword smile as he regarded her. "Well, you see I couldn't go myself," she laughed. "So you sent your husband, next best thing." "It wasn't so bad. I helped him, you know." "Wrote all his speeches, kicked up all of his dust for him, didn't you?" "Not all, but I helped." "With your scrapbooks, for example?" "Yes," she admitted. "If you had been a man, Susan, you'd not have survived some of the things you've said and done." "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." "What are you talking about?" she exclaimed, leaning forward and staring at him in faint alarm as if she did indeed smell something burning. "I cannot tell you yet. I'm waiting for the other party," he answered. "The other party? Whom do you expect? What does all this mean, anyway? Why was I summoned here? Have we not had enough excitement for one day, with the funeral this morning, and with every man in this town holding his breath for fear of what will happen to him when the William J. Mosely Estate is wound up? I've heard nothing else for two days. Not a word about the poor woman, who might as well have been a shadow on the wall of her house for all she meant to anybody until she died," she said, fanning herself and looking at him irritably. "She was a great woman," he said simply.