say the unforgiveable thing. "You see," she said, more quietly, "you
had disappeared. . . ."

"My mother is an old woman," said Derek stiffly. "Naturally I had to
look after her. I called to you to follow."

"Oh, I understand. I'm simply trying to explain what happened. I was
there all alone, and Wally Mason . . ."

"Wally!" Derek uttered a short laugh, almost a bark. "It got to
Christian names, eh?"

Jill set her teeth.

"I told you I knew him as a child. I always called him Wally then."

"I beg your pardon. I had forgotten."

"He got me out through the pass-door onto the stage and through the
stage-door."

Derek was feeling cheated. He had the uncomfortable sensation that
comes to men who grandly contemplate mountains and . . . see them
dwindle to mole-hills. The apparently outrageous had shown itself in
explanation nothing so out-of-the-way after all. He seized upon the
single point in Jill's behavior that still constituted a grievance.

"There was no need for you to go to supper with the man!" Jove-like
wrath had ebbed away to something deplorably like a querulous
grumble. "You should have gone straight home. You must have known how