Very quickly conversation flagged, as she knew it inevitably must. These friends of hers had little to say, she knew, nor said that little long. Bridge was proposed and accepted. Tables were quickly formed, and in a very few moments everyone was engrossed in the play. That is, every one but Della Baker, who had disappeared, pleading a headache, and her silent husband, who loathed cards; and Good, who did not play. Judith saw the two men stroll silently together out onto the terrace; and then, a moment later, through a door on the other side of the room, Molly Wolcott and Roger. It must be something momentous she reflected, that could entice Molly Wolcott from a game of any sort--particularly if the stakes were likely to be high. And it was. The momentum in this case was furnished by Roger with his determined insistence that she have a word with him. They strolled silently through the garden until they came to one of the stone benches by the tennis courts. Roger made a gallant pretence of dusting it off with his handkerchief. Then he sat down beside her. "Well," she said, after waiting for him to speak. "What do you want to tell me about?" Roger lit a cigarette and threw the match away with a truculent gesture. "You don't need to be so cold-blooded about it," he said irritably. "About what?" she asked calmly. "Oh, you know." "I haven't an idea," she said artlessly. "Oh, about everything," he stumbled helplessly. "Everything?" There was an excellent imitation of astonishment in her voice. It brought him sharply to his feet, and he thrust his hands into his pockets with a snort of impatience. "Yes, of course, my loving you--and all that." "Oh...." Her noncommittal intonation was perfectly calculated. "Well, I want an answer," he demanded belligerently. "You haven't any right to keep me dangling this way." "But I gave you an answer." "Not a definite one." "I don't know how to make it any more definite. I told you I ... liked you better than anybody else, and some day, perhaps--" "Well, that's not definite. Why don't you like me well enough to marry me?" "Oh, but I do," she insisted warmly. "You do...?" He was nonplussed by that example of logic. "Yes, indeed I do." "Well, why don't you?" There was more than a hint of exasperation in his voice. He was fast losing his temper. "Because...." "Because why? For goodness' sake, can't you give me a real reason ... something I can use my teeth on?" He was striding rapidly up and down in front of her, and his growing wrath was so ill concealed under a very obvious effort at patience, that she could not resist a faint chuckle. He caught it and stopped short. "You're laughing at me?" he declared, half interrogatively. "Oh, Roger," she cried, "how could you think that." "You were ... I heard you." "I wasn't." "Now what's the use of saying that?" he demanded.