ill skilfully eluded him.

"Why, of course I've forgiven you, Derek, if there was, anything to
forgive."

"Anything to forgive!" Derek began to get into his stride. These were
the lines on which he had desired the interview to develop. "I was a
brute! A cad!"

"Oh, no!"

"I was. Oh, I have been through hell!"

Jill turned her head away. She did not want to hurt him, but nothing
could have kept her from smiling. She had been so sure that he would
say that sooner or later.

"Jill!" Derek had misinterpreted the cause of her movement, and had
attributed it to emotion. "Tell me that everything is as it was
before."

Jill turned.

"I'm afraid I can't say that, Derek."

"Of course not!" agreed Derek in a comfortable glow of manly remorse.
He liked himself in the character of the strong man abashed. "It would
be too much to expect, I know. But, when we are married...."

"Do you really want to marry me?"

"Jill!"

"I wonder!"

"How can you doubt it?"

Jill looked at him.

"Have you thought what it would mean?"

"What it would mean?"

"Well, your mother...."

"Oh!" Derek dismissed Lady Underhill with a grand gesture.

"Yes," persisted Jill, "but, if she disapproved of your marrying me
before, wouldn't she disapprove a good deal more now, when I haven't a
penny in the world and am just in the chorus...."

A sort of strangled sound proceeded from Derek's throat.

"In the chorus!"

"Didn't you know? I thought Freddie must have told you."

"In the chorus!" Derek stammered. "I thought you were here as a guest
of Mrs. Peagrim's."

"So I am--like all the rest of the company."

"But.... But...."

"You see, it would be bound to make everything a little difficult,"
said Jill. Her face was grave, but her lips were twitching. "I mean,
you are rather a prominent man, aren't you, and if you married a
chorus-girl...."

"Nobody would know," said Derek limply.

Jill opened her eyes.

"Nobody would _know_!" She laughed. "But, of course, you've never met
our Press-agent. If you think that nobody would know that a girl in
the company had married a baronet who was a member of parliament and
expected to be in the Cabinet in a few years, you're wronging him! The
news would be on the front page of all the papers the very next
day--columns of it, with photographs. There would be articles about it
in the Sunday papers. Illustrated! And then it would be cabled to
England and would appear in the papers there.... Yo