e at forty-nine,
and you defended poor prisoners for twenty years before that."

The Judge was conquered, and he was never the man to pretend he was not
beaten when he was. He admired skill too much for that. He squeezed M.
Fille's arm and said:

"I've been quick with my tongue myself, but I feel sure now, that it's
through long and close association with my Clerk of the Court."

"Ah, monsieur, you are so difficult to understand!" was the reply. "I
have known you all these years, and yet--"

"And yet you did not know how much of the woman there was in me!...
But yes, it is that. It is that which I fear with our Zoe. Women break
out--they break out, and then there is the devil to pay. Look at her
mother. She broke out. It was not inevitable. It was the curse of
opportunity, the wrong thing popping up to drive her mad at the wrong
moment. Had the wrong thing come at the right time for her, when she was
quite sane, she would be yonder now with our philosopher. Perhaps she
would not be contented if she were there, but she would be there; and
as time goes on, to be where we were in all things which concern the
affections, that is the great matter."

"Ah, yes, ah, yes," was the bright-eyed reply of that Clerk, "there is
no doubt of that! My sister and I there, we are fifty years together,
never with the wrong thing at the wrong time, always the thing as it
was, always to be where we were."

The Judge shook his head. "There is an eternity of difference, Fille,
between the sister and brother and the husband and wife. The sacredness
of isolation is the thing which holds the brother and sister together.
The familiarity of--but never mind what it is that so often forces
husband and wife apart. It is there, and it breaks out in rebellion as
it did with the wife of Jean Jacques Barbille. As she was a strong woman
in her way, it spoiled her life, and his too when it broke out."

M. Fille's face lighted with memory and feeling. "Ah, a woman of
powerful emotions, monsieur, that is so! I think I never told you, but
at the last, in my office, when she went, she struck George Masson in
the face. It was a blow that--but there it was; I have never liked to
think of it. When I do, I shudder. She was a woman who might have been
in other circumstances--but there!"

The Judge suddenly stopped in his walk and faced round on his friend.
"Did you ever know, my Solon," he said, "that it was not Jean Jacques
who saved Carmen at the wreck of