Jill watched him curiously and with a certain pity. It was so easy to read what was passing in his mind. She wondered what he would say, how he would flounder out of his unfortunate position. She had no illusions about him now. She did not even contemplate the possibility of chivalry winning the battle which was going on within him.
"It would be very awkward, wouldn't it?" she said.
And then pity had its way with Jill. He had treated her badly; for a time she had thought that he had crushed all the heart out of her: but he was suffering, and she hated to see anybody suffer.
"Besides," she said, "I'm engaged to somebody else."
As a suffocating man, his lips to the tube of oxygen, gradually comes back to life, Derek revived—slowly as the meaning of her words sank into his mind, then with a sudden abruptness.
"What?" he cried.
"I'm going to marry somebody else. A man named Wally Mason."
Derek swallowed. The chalky look died out of his face, and he flushed hotly. His eyes, half relieved, half indignant, glowed under their pent-house of eyebrow. He sat for a moment in silence.
"I think you might have told me before!" he said huffily.
Jill laughed.