The Little Warrior

so enjoyable, had contained no pleasant portions for Derek. Looking back over a lifetime whose events had been almost uniformly agreeable, he told himself that he could not recall another

arly part of the play, the fire at the theatre, the undignified scramble for the exits, and now this discovery of the girl whom he was engaged to marry supping at the Savoy with a fellow he didn't remember ever having seen in

hroat and started to choke her. Being what he was, he merely received her with frozen silence and led her ou

y an inclination to raise his voice to a

, half frightening. She had never met anybody who affected her in this way as Derek did. She moved a little closer, and felt for

ved in keeping the world in its place, but she never. To her he had always been the perfect gracious knight. A little to

the wrong ones. The adjective "cross" as a description of his Jove-like wrath that consumed his whole being jarred up

ro

in at the windows. It was a pale, anxious little

ut in front of him as if he were soliloquizing. "I simply cannot understand you. After what happened before dinner tonight, for you

n't und

cored a point made Derek feel a little better. "I admit it. You

heatre. He was the

lking to? The fellow who scraped acq

old friend. I mean, I kne

n't tell

ound it o

wrongs surging back over him. "What do you suppose my mother thought? She asked me w

deep mutual antipathy which is so much more common than love at first sight had sprung up between the two at the instant of their meeting. The circumstances of that meeting had caused it to take ro

he was the man who got me safely out of the theatre after you ..." She checked herself. She did not

ek stiffly. "Naturally I had to look

g to explain what happened. I was t

rt laugh, almost a bark. "It

et her

as a child. I always

pardon. I ha

pass-door onto the stage

ns and ... see them dwindle to mole-hills. The apparently outrageous had shown itself in explanation nothing so

d ebbed away to something deplorably like a querulous grumble. "You should h

n't seem so very anxious! You were

ek Underhill first admitted to himself that, intoxicate his senses as she might, there was a possibility that Jill Mariner was not the ideal wife for him. The idea came and went more quickly than breath upon a mirror. It pass

a cup of soup would do her good. And, as for being anxious ab

"they told you I hadn't,

wound Derek. Whole-hearted in everything she did, she loved him with her whole heart. There might be speck

id. "So awfully sorry! I've

iffly in her grasp. It was like being grudgingly recognized by somebo

ddress for a gentleman of his standing. ("In a sense, my dear child I admit, it is Brompton Road, but it opens into Lennox

r be naugh

store his equanimity. Then the sense of her nearness, her sweetness, the faint perfume of her hair,

th a happy laugh. It had been a te

said Derek t

ickly as it had come. Jill absent always affected him differently from Jill present. He was not a man of strong imagination,