It was a plain,
straight issue of the strong man humbling himself--not too much of
course, but sufficiently: and it called, in his opinion, for the low
voice, the clenched hand, and the broken whisper. Speaking as he had
spoken, he had given the scene the right key from the start--or would
have done if she had not got in ahead of him and opened it on a note
of absurd cheeriness? Derek found himself resenting her cheeriness.
Often as he had attempted during the voyage from England to visualize
to himself this first meeting, he had never pictured Jill smiling
brightly at him. It was a jolly smile, and made her look extremely
pretty, but it jarred upon him. A moment before he had been half
relieved, half disconcerted: now he was definitely disconcerted. He
searched in his mind for a criticism of her attitude, and came to the
conclusion that what was wrong with it was that it was too friendly.
Friendliness is well enough in its way, but in what should have been a
tense clashing of strong emotions it did not seem to Derek fitting.

"Did you have a pleasant trip?" asked Jill. "Have you come over on
business?"

A feeling of bewilderment came upon Derek. It was wrong, it was all
wrong. Of course, she might be speaking like this to cloak intense
feeling, but, if so, she had certainly succeeded. From her manner, he
and she might be casual acquaintances. A pleasant trip! In another
minute she would be asking him how he had come out on the sweepstake
on the ship's run. With a sense of putting his shoulder to some heavy
weight and heaving at it, he sought to lift the conversation to a
higher plane.

"I came to find _you_!" he said; still huskily but not so huskily as
before. There are degrees of huskiness, and Derek's was sharpened a
little by a touch of irritation.

"Yes?" said Jill.

Derek was now fermenting. What she ought to have said, he did not
know, but he knew that it was not "Yes?" "Yes?" in the circumstances
was almost as bad as "Really?"

There was a pause. Jill was looking at him with a frank and
unembarrassed gaze which somehow deepened his sense of annoyance. Had
she looked at him coldly, he could have understood and even
appreciated it. He had been expecting coldness, and had braced himself
to combat it. He was still not quite sure in his mind whether he was
playing the role of a penitent or a King Cophetua, but in either
character he might have anticipated a little temporary coldness, which
it would have be