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.

"Don't you dare talk to me like that!" She was bolt upright herself, and
wrath flamed in her own eyes. "Don't you ever dare use that tone to me,
Roger Wynrod."

"I'm sorry," he said humbly, as if he really had committed a crime of
incredible enormity. Then with one last gasp of justification, he added
a timid "But you did...."

She would not allow him to finish. Quite illogically, but quite
completely, she had changed the positions. From being the defence she
had managed to make herself the prosecution, and Roger, being thoroughly
masculine, was utterly dumfounded at the s