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 Ovington Square which Jill’s Uncle Christopher had settled upon as a suitable address for a gentleman of his standing. (“In a sense, my dear child I admit, it is Brompton Road, but it opens into Lennox Gardens, which makes it to all intents and purposes Sloane Street”) 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.