terly different. She found it impossible to understand.

As she scanned the laughing faces about the board, another curious thing
struck her. The array of glasses in front of Good was quite untouched.
But the same phenomenon was to be observed in front of her brother. It
was the first time she had ever seen that, and as she rejoiced, she
marvelled.

It was an unusually effective party, she reflected, as they rose,
leaving the men to their cigars and coffee, and the cause of its success
was plain. She smiled to herself at the fears with which she had decided
upon his presence. She wondered if he guessed how surprised she was.

But later, when the gathering began to disintegrate into little groups
of two's and three's, Good became strangely silent. The sparkle had gone
out of his eyes, she thought, and with it, the sparkle from his mind.
The bursts of laughter became less frequent, and finally ceased
altogether. The lines of his face appeared to droop, as she had rarely
seen them, and he stood to one side, rather moodily, as if in
contemplation of his companions. His behaviour was singular. But the
others appeared to notice nothing untoward. Indeed, many of them had
ceased to notice him at all. He was a novelty, and like all novelties
and new sensations, with them, he had begun to pall. If he was acting
deliberately, she reflected, he was acting not unwisely. He was
withdrawing at the apex of his hour.

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