"It's absurd, of course," she said in a voice which struck him as very strange and mechanical. "He can't leave us like this. It's too ridiculous." For a moment he thought her feeling was one of resentment. "Where can I reach him?" she asked abruptly. He concluded that it was something quite different. "God knows," he said. "But don't worry. It's just a tantrum. He'll be back." "Did you ever know him to have a tantrum?" demanded Judith, almost fiercely. Roger was startled. He had never seen his sister look or act just like that before. He tried, unsuccessfully, to guess what it all signified. "Call up the office and see if you can get his address," she ordered. Obediently he went to the telephone. When he returned, she was pacing slowly to and fro before the fireplace. Her mouth was curiously set, with what sentiments he could not tell, and her eyebrows were drawn together in two deep incisions. At her unspoken question he shook his head. "But I must find him--I simply must, you know," she cried petulantly, like a child. He could only shrug his shoulders. "It's so utterly silly," she murmured. Suddenly she ceased pacing the floor, to stand staring, glassy-eyed, at him ... and then, like a pricked balloon, she collapsed inertly on the lounge, her face buried in her arms. Her heaving back and the sound from the cushions, needed no explanation. Roger stole softly from the room. He wondered, uncomfortably, as he went upstairs, if he would ever understand women. Being about to marry one, it struck him that some sort of understanding was rather important. CHAPTER XIV A SECRET REVEALED I But more pressing matters drove the curious problem presented by his sister and Good temporarily out of Roger's mind. He was dining with Molly Wolcott that evening, and, as he dressed, his thoughts, quite properly, centred exclusively in her. It was she herself, however, who recalled the distressing situation. "How's Mr. Good?" she asked. Somewhat to his surprise her father echoed the question, with what seemed like more than a mere polite interest. Briefly he told the simple facts as they had occurred, refraining from any attempt at explanation. "But didn't he give any reason?" asked Mollie incredulously, when he had finished. "Not a one." "Did he say there was a reason?" Roger thought it a little odd that the Judge should manifest such concern for a person with whom he could have had only the slightest acquaintance. "Yes," he admitted, "he did." "But he wouldn't give it?" "No. And he skipped so fast I didn't have time to press him much." "Have you any hypothesis?" The Judge fingered his watch chain nervously. It occurred to Roger that he was making an effort to seem only mildly interested.