phoned to your home to ask if you had come in."

"And when," thought Jill, "they told you I hadn't, you went off to
supper!"

She did not speak the words. If she had an edged tongue, she had also
the control of it. She had no wish to wound Derek. Whole-hearted in
everything she did, she loved him with her whole heart. There might be
specks upon her idol--that its feet might be clay she could never
believe--but they mattered nothing. She loved him.

"I'm so sorry, dear," she said. "So awfully sorry! I've been a bad
girl, haven't I?"

She felt for his hand again, and this time he allowed it to remain
stiffly in her grasp. It was like being grudgingly recognized by
somebody very dignified who had his doubts about you but reserved
judgment.

The cab drew up at the door of the house in Ovingdon Square which
Jill's Uncle Christopher had settled upon as a suitable address for a
gentleman of his standing. Jill put up her face to be kissed, like a
penitent child.

"I'll never be naughty again!"

For a flickering instant Derek hesitated. The drive, long as it was,
had been too short wholly to restore his equanimity. Then the sense of
her nearness, her sweetness, the faint perfume of her hair, and her
eyes, shining softly in the darkness so close to his own, overcame
him. He crushed her to him.

Jill disappeared into the house with a happy laugh. It had been a
terrible day, but it had ended well.

"The Albany," said Derek to the cabman.

He leaned back against the cushions. His senses were in a whirl. The
cab rolled on. Presently his exalted mood vanished as quickly as it
had come. Jill absent always affected him differently from Jill
present. He was not a man of strong imagination, and the stimulus of
her waned when she was not with him. Long before the cab reached the
Albany the frown was back on his face.

IV

Arriving at the Albany, he found Freddie Rooke lying on his spine in a
deep arm-chair. His slippered feet were on the mantelpiece, and he was
restoring his wasted tissues with a strong whisky-and-soda. One of
the cigars which Barker, the valet, had stamped with the seal of his
approval was in the corner of his mouth. The _Sporting Times_, with a
perusal of which he had been soothing his fluttered nerves, had fallen
on the floor beside the chair. He had finished reading, and was now
gazing peacefully at the ceiling, his mind a perfect blank. There was
nothing the matter with Freddie.

"Hullo, old thing