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unusual for a jurist, Caroline remained persistently, sometimes maddeningly, elusive.
    The woman herself was striking—tall, erect, graceful, with sculpted features, a long aquiline nose, wide-set brown eyes, a high forehead, and glossy black hair which began with a widow’s peak. She looked and sounded like what she was, the daughter of a patrician New England family, except for a touch of the exotic—the darkness, olive skin, a somewhat sardonic smile—which suggested her mother, a French Jewish woman whose parents had died in the Holocaust. Combined with near-flawless diction and a natural air of command, her vivid looks had helped imprint her on the public mind several years before when, as a state court judge, she had presided over the televised trial of Mary Carelli, a famoustelevision journalist accused of murder. By the time Carelli had gone free, after a trial watched by millions, Caroline was almost as well known.
    To Sarah, Caroline’s every step since—acceptance of a partnership in Kenyon & Walker, then a high federal judgeship—served an ultimate aim so lofty Sarah dared not mention it. Now, though the sound was low, the small television beside the stove was tuned to a replay of the Kilcannon inaugural—as much, Sarah guessed, for its sudden, startling implications for the Supreme Court as for the accession of a new president. In Sarah’s mind, no ambition Caroline held could be too great: her year as Caroline’s clerk had impressed on her the older woman’s integrity and intellectual rigor. Were Sarah asked whom she wished to emulate, her answer would be Caroline Masters.
    Why Caroline maintained their friendship seemed less clear. Yet she exhibited an older-sisterly, almost maternal, interest in Sarah’s career and life. Perhaps, Sarah had concluded, it was because Caroline had no children of her own, and seemed to regard her only sibling—the niece’s mother— with detachment. Whatever the reasons, Sarah was pleased to benefit.
    “‘Run like a thief’?” Sarah repeated. “Why? Because of the firm?”
    “That’s
one
reason.” Caroline smiled again. “My old partners at Kenyon & Walker may snatch this poisoned cup from your lips before you take a swallow. For once I can hardly blame them. They want to be known as the West Coast’s leading corporate firm, not its leading proponent of abortion rights. Any lawsuit to invalidate the Protection of Life Act would be bitter, and the issues are thorny and emotional.” Caroline’s tone took on its familiar combination of irony and tough-mindedness. “If you have any illusion that this is merely an open and shut case of legalizing ‘infanticide,’ wait until advocates for the disabled accuse you of wanting to abort fetuses just because they’re unsatisfactory—by
your
standards, whatever they may be. You’d better have an answer.”
    The issue, Sarah realized, had not occurred to her. Taking a sip of her wine, Caroline spoke more softly. “All that I’m asking is that you ponder this with care. The people on both sides of this one, including politicians and activists, havedeep convictions and very long memories. Some days I’m very glad to have never ruled on an abortion case.”
    Or for that matter, Sarah realized, offered her personal opinion about abortion at all—perhaps because Caroline believed that, for a judge, idle chatter about volatile topics was impolitic. And her analysis was depressingly acute: for someone with judicial ambitions, even as nascent as Sarah’s, entanglement with issues as inflammatory as parental consent and late-term abortion could be as lethal as denouncing the death penalty. “I keep thinking about the clinic,” she answered. “The Christian Commitment nearly shut us down. Now the pro-lifers say they’re appropriating the bodies of teenage girls in their best interests, through a ‘protective’ new law, when what some of them really want is to punish them.
    “It’s hard not to respect many of