perfect gracious knight. A little too perfect, perhaps, a trifle too
gracious, possibly, but she had been too deeply in love to notice
that. "Don't be cross!"

The English language is the richest in the world, and yet somehow in
moments when words count most we generally choose the wrong ones. The
adjective "cross" as a description of his Jove-like wrath that
consumed his whole being jarred upon Derek profoundly. It was as
though Prometheus, with the vultures tearing his liver, had been
asked if he were piqued.

"Cross!"

The cab rolled on. Lights from lamp-posts flashed in at the windows.
It was a pale, anxious little face that they lit up when they shone
upon Jill.

"I can't understand you," said Derek at last. Jill noticed that he
had not yet addressed her by her name. He was speaking straight out
in front of him as if he were soliloquizing. "I simply cannot
understand you. After what happened before dinner tonight, for you to
cap everything by going off alone to supper at a restaurant, where
half the people in the room must have known you, with a man . . ."

"You don't understand!"

"Exactly! I said I did not understand." The feeling of having scored
a point made Derek feel a little better. "I admit it. Your behavior
is incomprehensible. Where did you meet this fellow?"