"Most emphatically you did. I know everything. Last night, when I went to my room, I heard voices through the door of our hostess' boudoir. I waited in order to listen, and sure enough it was the prefect who was holding forth angrily about you against a shrill high-pitched voice, which was obviously that of your Fräulein Fruzsinka. Thereupon, the lady retorted that there was an understanding between you, and that the affair was quite serious." "Bah! As if I meant to marry every girl to whom I have made a declaration," laughed the judge. "Aha, that would be quite as difficult to bring about as if Fräulein Fruzsinka wished to marry all those who had courted her. It cuts both ways. Yet she is a charming girl! If she could only find some good man who would marry her. Why not you, eh?" "Most certainly not. For if someone else marries her, I am certain that she will be true to me. But if I, and not anyone else, wed her, then sure enough she'll deceive me every day." "But if you don't mean to, then it were surely a great mistake, besides a mere quibble of words, to leave in the fair lady's hands a pledge that could be legally produced as argument for the plaintiff." "What do you mean?" "Tut, tut. I haven't presided twenty years for nothing in criminal law; I understand what tokens mean. What happened in the little ante-room? What has the defendant to urge on his behalf?" "Why, I only superintended the carrying out of the law from the window." "And in the intervals taught your hostess how to conjugate the verb _amo_, to love, eh?" "Stated but not proven--but if it were so?" "Consequently, the lady may be justified in urging: 'If he really and truly loves me, let him give me a love token, a lock of his hair.'" "Why not?" "Exactly--now you stand convicted! Need I remind you that you only sought a pair of scissors to cut off a curl of your hair, and while you did that, your lady-love registered the blows for you as your _locum tenens_. Yet you were giving the most dangerous blow of all to the guileless loving heart which beat under your gift, for Fräulein Fruzsinka hid the curl in her locket, and when we came away, I noted how she leaned out of the window and kissed the locket over and over again. Is the impeachment sufficient?"