ca at any moment now."

Pique, that ally of the devil, regained its slipping grip upon Jill.

"Oh? I'm sorry," she said indifferently. "Well, good-bye, then."

"Good-bye."

"I hope you have a pleasant voyage."

"Thanks."

He turned into the cloak-room, and Jill went up the stairs to join
Derek. She felt angry and depressed, full of a sense of the futility
of things. People flashed into one's life and out again. Where was the
sense of it?

III

Derek had been scowling, and Derek still scowled. His eyebrows were
formidable, and his mouth smiled no welcome at Jill as she approached
him. The evening, portions of which Jill had found so enjoyable, had
contained no pleasant portions for Derek. Looking back over a lifetime
whose events had been almost uniformly agreeable, he told himself
that he could not recall another day which had gone so completely
awry. It had started with the fog. He hated fog. Then had come that
meeting with his mother at Charing Cross, which had been enough to
upset him by itself. After that, rising to a crescendo of
unpleasantness, the day had provided that appalling situation at the
Albany, the recollection of which still made him tingle; and there had
followed the silent dinner, the boredom of the early part of the play,
the fire at the theatre, the undignified scramble for the exits, and
now this discovery of the girl whom he was engaged to marry supping at
the Savoy with a fellow he didn't remember ever having seen in his
life. All these things combined to induce in Derek a mood bordering on
ferocity. His birth and income combining to make him one of the
spoiled children of the world, had fitted him ill for such a series of
catastrophes. He received Jill with frozen silence and led her out to
the waiting taxi-cab. It was only when the cab had started on its
journey that he found relief in speech.

"Well," he said, mastering with difficulty an inclination to raise his
voice to a shout, "perhaps you will kindly explain?"

Jill had sunk back against the cushions of the cab. The touch of his
body against hers always gave her a thrill, half pleasurable, half
frightening. She had never met anybody who affected her in this way as
Derek did. She moved a little closer, and felt for his hand. But, as
she touched it, it retreated--coldly. Her heart sank. It was like
being cut in public by somebody very dignified.

"Derek, darling!" Her lips trembled. Others had seen this side of
Derek Underh