"Don't you ever get any fun?" asked Gaga, timidly. "I mean, go out, or anything?"

Sally shook her head. She was silhouetted against the light.

"No," she told him. "Not often." It was strange how refined her voice automatically became when she was talking to Gaga. She was altogether restrained. "You can't if you've got to earn your own living. And have to get here early in the morning."

Gaga hesitated, half turned away, came back.

"I'm very sorry," he said, in his gentle, weak way. "Don't you like it? I mean going out. Or is it just that you don't get the chance? Poor little girl. Er— I'm sorry. Er—it's a beautiful night, isn't it?"

"Lovely," agreed Sally. "I'm going to walk home."

He considered that. He did not seem to have anything more to say. Sally moved to her place, and mechanically put away her scissors and thimble. She was still in her pinafore, and she could not take that off and roll it up while Gage was in the room. So they stood there, separated by several yards. He took out a cigarette case, and lighted a cigarette, throwing the match under the long table at the side of the room.

"Yes," he said reflectively. "Are you going to have dinner first?"

"Me?" laughed Sally. She shook her head. "When I get home. If I had dinner in London it would take all my wages, and more, at a single go." She laughed again, but not woundingly.

Gaga looked at his shoes, again at Sally, again at his shoes.

"Look here," he blurted out, "I wish you'd...."

Sally's ears were pricked; but they heard only the opening of the door of Madam's room as Miss Summers returned. Both Sally and Gaga turned away, as if in slight chagrin. Then Gaga backed out of the workroom. The conversation was over. It was time to go home. Slowly Sally removed her pinafore and rolled it, thinking rapidly. Miss Summers was so pleased at Madam's satisfaction with the dress that she was beaming and purring and rubbing her hands together. She nodded benevolently at Sally.

"Well, you get off, Sally," she said, in a full tone of delight. "It's quite all right. Madam's very pleased with the dress. Don't hang about now, but get home to your supper. You've been a very good girl."

Sally put on her hat.

"Good night, Miss Summers." And as she passed the door of Madam's room she gave a little silent nod towards it, and a little grimace also. She was out upon the stairs. She was out of doors. And as she walked along she heard rapid footsteps behind her, shrank a little, and looked up to see Gaga standing beside her, quite breathless, as if with a hurried journey.

"Er— Miss Minto," he panted. "I'm sorry.... I ... will you take these? Er—good night."

He raised his hat, and went into the building, leaving Sally mutely clasping a box of chocolates which he had thrust into her hand. She looked round, but he had disappeared, and she began to march homeward, still clasping the chocolates. Only when she was in Regent Street with her treasure did Sally dare to laugh. Then the whole scene came back to her so vividly that she could control her mirth no longer, but stared, shaking, into a shop window. He must have hurried out to buy the chocolates after being interrupted by Miss Summers.

"My!" she whispered to herself. "My!" For a time that was all she could say; but as she resumed her journey she exclaimed: "Chocolates! He never gave Rose anything at all. Ee! He was going to ask me to dinner. Wish he had! He didn't dare! My word, he hasn't half got a crush on me! Old Gaga!" She was consumed with delighted laughter, that made her break into smiles at intervals during the whole of the dismal walk which followed.

viii

"Here, have a chocolate, ma," said Sally. Mrs. Minto was sitting beside the empty grate reading, with the aid of a magnifying glass, a piece of newspaper which had been wrapped around Sally's mended shoes. She looked very frail and meagre, but she was very much better than she had been, and but for the ugliness of the room and the drabness of her clothes she would not have appeared miserable. She was, in fact, a pathetic figure; but thanks to Sally they were no longer starving, or in immediate danger of it.

"Chocolates!" cried Mrs. Minto. Then, sternly and suspiciously, she said in her weak voice of warning, "Where did you get them from, Sally?"

"Won 'em in a raffle," declared Sally.

"Oo, gambling!" reproved Mrs. Minto. "It's very wrong of young girls——"

"Fiddlesticks! They're good chocolates, too," said Sally. "Don't make yourself sick. It's a nuisance. Besides, I want some myself. I am hungry. I've been working all the evening."

"Working!" grumbled her mother, incredulously.

"Well.... I ... have!" asserted Sally. "Perhaps you'd like me to get Miss Summers to give me a certificate? You'll see. I shall have a bit more money at the end of the week. Then you'll rub your eyes. You'll apologise—I don't think! No, I'm a bad girl, wasting my time gadding about. You never think of that when you get the money, or the money if I'm late."

"Hush! Hush!" begged her mother. "I never said you was a bad girl. You're a very good girl. But when you bring home a box of chocolates at this hour—nine o'clock, and past—and say you won them in a raffle, and you've been working—well!"

"What's that you're reading?" asked Sally, pointing to the small print.

Mrs. Minto straightened the sheet of newspaper, and held it up to the light.

"It's an old paper," she said. "A trial."

"Lor! Murder?" Sally almost left her supper. "What's it all about?"

"Well ... oo, he must a been a wicked wretch. He poisoned the old lady. He'd robbed her before he did it. Took all her money to give her an annuity, and then he poisoned her."

"Poison! Whew! What sort of poison?"

"Flypapers, it was. Not them sticky ones, but the brown, what you put in water. Got arsenic in them, they have."

"What's arsenic?"

Mrs. Minto looked over her magnifying glass at Sally in a bewildered way.

"I don't know. It's poison. I never poisoned anybody. Not that I know of."

"No," agreed Sally. She thought to herself: "She ought to have poisoned dad. All of us." Melancholy seized her, a dreadful passing fit of depression. Suddenly she longed for Toby. Aloud, she proceeded, more seriously: "If it's in the flypapers, why don't we all get poisoned, ma?"

"Well, it seems he soaked the papers, and drained off the water, with the poison in it, and mixed it with her food—beef tea, and that. She never noticed anything. She had awful pains, and diarrhoea, and was sick; and then she died, poor thing."

"Hn," said Sally, reaching out for the chocolates. "I'll read it. I like murders."

"Hush!" cried Mrs. Minto, in horror. "Read them—yes; but say you like murders! What wicked people there are in the world, to be sure. I hope they hanged him."

"Doesn't it say?" mumbled Sally, dealing with a chocolate with caramel inside it.

"It's torn across. It's what I got your shoes in, Sally. It's a.... It's 'Stories of Famous Trials,' in the Weekly Something.... I can't see what it is."

For the next quarter of an hour Sally ate chocolates and read about the trial of Seddon for murdering Miss Barrow.

"Miss Barrow!" she exclaimed. "Wonder if she was any relation to old Perce! I'll ask Mrs. Perce about it. Oo—fancy Tollington Park! Quite near us in Hornsey Road."

Mrs. Minto shuddered, and looked furtively at the clock, longing for her bedtime. Sally caught the glance, shut up the box of chocolates, and folded the paper.

"You going to work?" asked her mother.

"Wash my hair."

"You're always washing ... washing, you call it!" cried Mrs. Minto.

Sally ignored the sneer, and proceeded to her occupation. There was a silence. Mrs. Minto yawned. She looked at Sally making her preparations, and into her face came a watchful anxiety that was mingled with profound esteem. There was a chic about her girl that made Mrs. Minto assume this expression quite often, and Sally knew it. She knew it now, and was elaborately unconscious of it. As she waited for the kettle and moved the lamp so that it would illumine the washstand, she whistled to show how blind she was to any sign of emotion from her mother. When the whistle was unavailing, she said sharply:

"Don't you think this is a pretty frock, ma?"

Mrs. Minto sighed heavily, and pulled herself up out of her chair.

"Far too pretty, if you ask me," she said. "Looks to me fast." She was full of concern, and did not try to hide it from Sally.

"Oo!" cried Sally. "You are stupid, ma!" And with that she whipped the dress over her head and revealed the fact that she wore no petticoat. Her mother was the more outraged.

Sally began to sing.

"'When you and I go down the love path together, Stars shall be shining and the night so fair.'"

"Well, it's a good thing nobody else sees you like that," sniffed her mother, rebukingly. "I don't know what they would think!"

Sally forebore to make the obvious retort. Her mother prepared for bed.

ix

For the next fortnight Sally did not see Gaga, and only at the end of the period did she learn that he had been away from London on business. This was one of the journeys of which Miss Summers had spoken, to the agricultural districts. Sally could not discover whether Gaga actually acted as traveller for his own firm; but she gathered that he found it useful to see how the country was behaving itself in the matter of agriculture. She suspected also that he went away for his health. She speculated as to what he looked like with his handsome coat off, and recalled wrists that could have been spanned with ease by her own small fingers. In contrast, when she saw Toby, she saw with swelling pride how big his hands were, and felt his already increased muscles. Once he swung her clear from the ground with one arm, so that her feet kicked against his leg in helplessness. He was getting stronger and stouter than ever, and his eyes were clear and his skin tanned and smoothed by the breeze. She adored him. He wanted her to go away with him during one of his leaves; but Sally did not dare to go, because her mother had been specially grumbling and suspicious. So they saw each other rarely for the rest of the year, and their meetings became the more precious for that reason.

Soon after Gaga returned, Madam went away. She had had no holiday, and she had fallen ill, with headaches and bilious attacks and a threat of jaundice. So it happened that Gaga came each day to the dressmaking establishment and took charge of the cash and the accounts, while Miss Summers and Miss Rapson interviewed any customers who came about dresses. Miss Rapson, a tall, thin, dark woman, was in another room, with eight girls under her; but Miss Summers was really in charge while Madam was away, because she understood the whole business, and was a more experienced woman than Miss Rapson. Sally had hardly ever seen Miss Rapson until this time, so much did she keep to her own room; but now, when the two who were in charge had to arrange their work together, there was more interchange. Sally had often to go into the other room with messages or work, and she came to understand very quickly what went on there. Miss Rapson was strict, and rather disagreeable. Her girls were like mice, unless she was absent; and her sallow face gave the clue to her disagreeableness. She did not like Sally at all, because she was jealous of her. Sally was quick to perceive this, but she did not retaliate. She formed her own cool conclusions about Miss Rapson. She understood the complexion, and she was more concerned with the details of the work than with anything else. Besides, she was in a strong position. She had nothing to fear from Miss Rapson. She soon recognised that she had not much to learn from her, either. Miss Rapson was forty, angular, shortsighted. She was inclined to be fussy and self-important and lacking in self-reliance. If anything went wrong she lost first her head and then her temper. "Hysterics!" thought Sally, cruelly. And Miss Rapson was very anxious indeed to have the reversion of Miss Summers' place of trust. She had set her heart upon it, although she knew that as Miss Summers was no older than herself, and as little likely to marry, she might fruitlessly wait a lifetime. Anything which suggested a possible rival, even though it might only be in the distant future, was a cause of sleeplessness to her, and after a sleepless night, when all possible causes of grief, summoned from memory and the inventions of her own unquiet spirit, came into her head, Miss Rapson was one of the most insufferable women in the dressmaking. "If I was boss here," thought Sally, "and I had any trouble with her, she'd go like a shot. Easily get someone in her place." But she did not show that she was thinking this. She said: "Yes, Miss Rapson. No, Miss Rapson. I'll tell Miss Summers, Miss Rapson," in the most respectful way. It was Miss Rapson who first suspiciously sounded Miss Summers about Sally. "Do you think she's deep?" she asked.

Now that Miss Summers had more to do, Sally was very useful to her. Also, Sally came to admire Miss Summers more than ever. She might be funny, with her eternally cold nose and her cat-like appearance, but she was an extraordinarily capable woman. She rose to emergencies, which is the sign of essential greatness. Not once did Sally see Miss Summers lose her nerve. True, there was no need for diplomacy or large generalship; but when work has to be arranged so that all customers are satisfied, not only with its quality but with the promptness of its delivery, a good deal of skill and management is required. It was forthcoming; and Sally was at hand to give important aid. The weak spot in the government of the business seemed to be Gaga, who betrayed incessant vacillation, and came in so often to consult Miss Summers that she became quite ruffled and indignant with him. "Such nonsense!" she would say to Sally. "A grown up man like that asking such silly questions. Why a girl would do it better." She had all the capable woman's contempt for the average member of her own sex. "Girls!" she would sniff. Shrewdly, Sally watched the comedy; but for all her shrewdness she never quite understood the cause of Gaga's weakness. It was that Madam had insisted upon early obedience in days when Gaga's precocious ill-health made him pliable; and a docile child becomes a tractable boy and finally a man who needs constant guidance. Sally only saw the last stage. She nodded grimly to herself one day. "Wants somebody to look after him," she said. "Somebody to manage him." With one of her unerring supplements she added confidently: "I could manage him. And look after him, too, for that matter. Poor lamb!"

The extra work kept Miss Summers and Miss Rapson late almost every evening, and Sally also stayed, so that in the evenings she often saw Gaga. She even, once or twice, when Miss Summers had gone to consult Miss Rapson (who stood upon her dignity and kept to her own room), sought pretexts for going into the room where Gaga was. She went in to look at the Directory, or she pretended that she had supposed Miss Summers with him; and on these occasions she stood at the door, and talked, until Miss Summers' imminent return made her fly innocently back to her seat. She enjoyed observing Gaga's pleasure, and even excitement, at her approach. It gratified her naughty vanity and her impulse to the exploitation of others. One evening when she had thus stolen five minutes, she found Gaga ruffling his hair over an account, and at his great sigh of bewilderment she turned from the book she was needlessly consulting.

"Got a headache, Mr. Bertram?" she timidly and commiseratingly asked.

Gaga looked up at her gratefully, a comic expression of dismay upon his face. The books lay before him upon the table, and an account had been transferred from one to another. A litter of papers was also there. He was in the last stages of perplexity.

"No," he said. "It's this account. I can't make it out. See if you can."

Sally went and stood close to him, leaning over to examine the books, so that his shoulder touched her side. She knew that the contact thrilled him, and for an instant was so occupied with the recognition that she could not collect her thoughts. He had been adding up in pencil on a sheet of paper the two series of entries, and there was a discrepancy between them. Sally checked his figures: there seemed nothing wrong with them. She herself added the two series of entries. Then, with a pointed finger she counted the entries. One of them had been omitted. Another examination showed which of them it was. She had solved his mystification. Her small forefinger pointed to that entry which accounted for the difference in the two casts. Gaga looked up at her in wondering admiration.

"What a marvellous girl you are!" he impulsively ejaculated. "I've been worrying over this for ten minutes. Thank you. Er—thank you."

Still she did not immediately leave him, and he made no attempt to move. It would have been the easiest thing for Gaga to encircle her with his arm, but he did not do so. At last Sally started away.

"I must go," she said breathlessly.

"Thank you, Miss Minto. I'm.... I'm so much ... obliged," stammered Gaga. She was at the door. "Oh, Miss Minto...." Sally turned, a mischievous expectancy upon her face. "Er...." Gaga swallowed. A faint colour rose to his grey cheeks. "I say, I wish you'd come out to dinner with me. I...."

"Oh, Mr. Bertram," murmured Sally. "It's very kind of you. I...."

"Do come. I'm ... so much obliged to you, you know. I mean, I...."

Sally gave a quick nod. She peeped to see that Miss Summers had not returned.

"Well, you see," she said. Then: "All right, I will. Thank you very much."

"To-night? In half an hour? Splendid. I'll be at the corner of the street. Just outside that big corner place. Thank you. That'll be fine." He was jubilant. Sally went back to her place with her mouth puckered into a curious smile that nobody could have understood. She felt that she had embarked at last upon the inevitable adventure with Gaga, and her sensation for the moment was one of pure triumph. A moment later, triumph was suffused with a faint derision. She thought how easy it was to handle Gaga. She felt how easy, how temptingly easy, it would be always to handle him. But all the same she was rather excited. It was the first time she had been out to dinner with a man. She knew he would look handsome and like a gentleman; she knew he would have plenty of money. She was glad to think that she was wearing her newest frock, the smartest she had. Well, she demanded of herself, why not? It'll please him, or he wouldn't have asked me! Would they have wine to drink? she wondered. A momentary self-distrust seized her in the matter of table-manners; but she shook it off. She would watch what Gaga did. She mustn't drink too much. She must mind her step. Then, irresistibly: "What a lark!" murmured Sally. She was very demure upon Miss Summers' return, and listened with equanimity to a few remarks made by Miss Summers as to the capacity of Miss Rapson. In reality her thoughts were occupied with speculations as to the entertainment which lay ahead. So Gaga had never given Rose anything; more fool Rose! Rose! She didn't know how to manage a man! She didn't know anything at all. She had been born pretty, and she thought that was all you had to do. Sally had not been born pretty; she had had to fight against physical disadvantages. It had taught her a great deal. It had taught her the art of tactics. Sally was very much wiser than she had been a year earlier. She had learnt immeasurably from her contact with Toby. She had kept her eyes open. She was unscrupulous. It was of no use to be scrupulous in this world; you lost all the fun of the fair. Sally was hilarious at her own irreverent unscrupulousness.

Half an hour later she slipped out, and along the street Gaga was waiting. He raised his hat—a thing Toby would never have done if he had left her so recently—and fell into step beside her. Sally shot a bright eye full of assurance. As Gaga showed himself nervous, so her assurance increased.

"Where would you like to go?" asked Gaga.

"Oo, you know better than ... I do," answered Sally, meekly. He stopped for a moment; then turned eastward; then stopped afresh, hesitating until Sally slightly frowned.

"Yes, we'll go to the Singe d'Or," he explained. "Unless you.... No, we'll go to the Rezzonico. You'd like to have music, I expect. You know, it's awfully good of you to come. I've wanted to talk to you ever since I heard you sing so beautifully."

The Love Path! Sally gave a start. What had Mrs. Perce said! Sally might not have a fortune in her voice, she mischievously thought; but at least she had a dinner! Well, master Toby; and what did he think of that, if you please?

"I'm very fond of music," she said, glibly.

"I could tell...." There was a pause. "Do you ... do you sing much?"

"No, not much." Sally was speaking like a lady. "Ai ... a ... don't get very much taime. I'm very fond of. It's so ... it's so...." She was rather lost for a phrase that should sound well.

"Quite, quite," agreed Gaga, eagerly.

"I wish I could play," Sally hurried to say, feeling that she had failed in effectiveness. He was loud in protest against her modesty. "Well, I mean, I've never—well, hardly ever—had any lessons. No, nor my voice. It's just ear. Mrs. P—— a friend of maine says I've got a very quick ear." Every now and then Sally was betrayed into Nosey-like refinement. She fought against it from an instinctive feeling that it was meretricious. But at the same time she was speaking with instinctive care, so as to avoid Cockney phrases, and pronunciations, and tones. She wanted him to think her—something that she called "nice." They walked the length of Regent Street, chatting thus; and at last reached the gilded Rezzonico, where there were liveried men who seized Gaga's hat and stick, and maitres d'hotel who hurried them this way and that in search of a table in the crowded, din-filled room. The walls were covered with enormous mirrors which were surrounded by gaudy mouldings. Tables were everywhere, and all appeared to be occupied. Men and women in evening dress, men and women in morning clothes, some of the women painted, others ordinary respectable members of the bourgeoisie, were sitting and dining and smoking and chattering loudly. Glasses, cigarettes, bottles, all sorts of dishes, strewn upon the tables, caught Sally's bewildered eye. Above all, a scratching orchestra rasped out a selection from one of Verdi's operas. A huge unmanageable noise of talk and laughter swelled the torrent of sound. Deafened, her nerve destroyed, Sally timidly followed the apparently aimless wanderings of Gaga and the maitres d'hotel, her shoulders stiff with self-consciousness in face of so many staring eyes and well-fed, well-dressed creatures; and at last they found a table. It was a bad table, in the middle of the room, near the band and the cash desk and a sort of sideboard into which bottles were ceaselessly dumped. A very old waiter, with white side whiskers like those of the late Emperor Franz Josef, very foreign and therefore particularly liable to misconstrue Gaga's stammered orders, served them with hors d'oeuvres, slashing down upon Sally's plate inconceivable mixtures of white and red and green fragments; and then hurried away as fast as his bunions allowed. Gaga was left to choose the wine, which he managed to do after many consultations with Sally and the waiter, and many changes of mind upon his own account. Sally riddled all his uncertainties with a merciless eye. He apparently knew a wine-list when he saw one; but his nervousness was so palpable that she was inclined even to suspect his knowledge. It was an injustice. She soon realised that the band was too noisy for talk, and the sideboard too shattering even for coherent thought. She knew, in fact, at the first encounter, that this was a bad table, and that bad tables were to be avoided by any expert eye. She knew the waiter was a bad waiter, and that Gaga was a bad host. She had her first lesson in the art of dining out at a restaurant.

But she dined! She drank more wine than she had intended to do, and it went to her head. She laughed, and became talkative, forgetting her refined accent, and thereby enjoying herself very much more than she would otherwise have done, and becoming a good and lively companion for the meal. Gaga could not respond to her talk, because it quickly became evident that, with all the good will in the world, he could not talk; but as the wine reached his head also he began to laugh at her remarks, and to look at her with such an expression of adoration in his chocolate eyes that Sally grew more and more at ease and more and more familiar with the passing of each minute, and the increasing effect of the wine she had taken. She sparkled, less in her speech than in her exhilarated and exhilarating manner. She was all nerves, all dancing coquettry.

"Don't look at me like that!" she pleaded, archly. Gaga's eyes glowed, and his mouth was stretched with laughing. "Make me feel as if...."

"How do I look at you? How does it make you feel?" asked Gaga with that kind of persistent seriousness with which a man talks to a pretty girl when he has drunk enough wine. "Tell me, Sally, how does it make you feel, Sally?" He reached his hand across the table, and laid it upon hers. "I mean, Sally.... I mean, if it makes you feel.... I'm sorry, d'you see? I look at you as I feel. I don't know how I look at you. I look at you...."

Gaga was not at all drunk; he was merely sententious and sentimental. Sally darted a roguish eye, first round her, and then at Gaga, enjoying very specially this stage of the meal. It was all fun to her, all flattering to her vanity, all a part of the noise and excitement and well-being that was making her spirits mount. She allowed her hand to remain under his for a moment; then tried to draw it away; then pinched his thumb gently and recovered her liberty. Gaga was unlike Toby. He had not the assurance of the physically vigorous. He was gentle, mild, stammering, and ineffective. But he was giving Sally a glorious evening's entertainment. At one step they had overleapt all that separated them, and were friends. He began to tell her, unasked, about his business, about his mother, about everything.

"My mother's a wonderful woman," he said. "Wonderful! She's made that business with her own hands. She began in a small way, and the business is almost out of her control. Not quite; but.... She's done it all herself. All herself. Wonderful woman. And yet, you know, Sally; she's hard. I wonder if you understand what I mean? She's always been a good mother to me. I wish I could tell you how good. There's the business I'm in, for example. But Sally.... I'm not a business man.... If I had somebody to do the business side, I've got.... I can design dresses. That's what I'm good at. She knows. She lets me design them, sometimes. I've got a touch, d'you see? But she's hard. She's so afraid of anybody meddling. She's made that business herself, and she won't let anybody else touch it. She has me to help her with the accounts; but, as I say, I'm not a business man. She thinks I'm a fool. You don't think I'm a fool, do you, Sally?"

"Me? You?" cried Sally, looking at him guilelessly. "Mr. Bertram!"

"She's very ill, Sally. Very ill indeed. I can see it. You know, you feel something. You see her keeping on and keeping on. Something's bound to go, sooner or later. It worries me, Sally. It worries me." From his long and unusually consecutive speech, Gaga fell into a silence. Meaninglessly, he repeated: "It worries me. That's one reason I asked you to come out to-night, Sally. I'm worried."

"Poor man!" murmured Sally.

"You know, you're kind, Sally. I can see your little bright eyes shining; and they make me ... they make me...." He was once again the old, incoherent Gaga, fingering his unused cheese knife and looking at her with an expression of pathetic helplessness that made Sally wary lest she should betray amusement. "I feel you understand. You're not very old, Sally; but I feel you understand. And.... I've always felt that. You're such a wonderful little girl. I mean...." He broke off with a gesture of vague despair of his power to say what he actually did mean. "I feel you can help me."

"Can I?" asked Sally, swiftly. "I'd love to."

"Would you really?" Gaga's tone was a fresh one, one of hope and light.

"Course I would," responded Sally. Already she was aware of practical advantages. Her heightened spirits were sobered immediately. But her face did not betray this. Her face continued the demure face of a young girl, not from any artfulness, but because she was in fact a demure young girl, and her hidden mental calculations did not yet show in her habitual expression.

"You'll be friends with me?" Gaga said, as though he asked a great favour.

"If you'll let me," answered Sally, as though she conferred one.

The movement of hands was almost simultaneous, but it began with Sally. Gaga clasped her left one in his right. Only for a minute. Then Sally could not resist a giggle, and the compact was unsignalised. They talked further, Sally once again in a state of delight, and Gaga inclined to be repetitious. And then, as it was nine o'clock, Sally said she must go. He saw her to her omnibus, and they parted as friends. From her seat inside, as the bus moved off, Sally waved to him; and afterwards settled down to the journey, full of memories and reflections of a curious and enchanting character. Not of Gaga were these reflections, save with an occasionally frowning brow of doubt; but of the remarkable vista which had been opened by his demand for friendship and help. An excited recollection of the lights and the mirrors and the overwhelming noise of the restaurant intoxicated her afresh. Her whole face was shining with excitement. She smiled to herself, occupied with such a mixture of sensations and imaginings that at one moment she wondered whether she was Sally Minto at all, and whether some magician had not changed that Sally for a new creature born to spend her days in gaudy restaurants and among all the noise and luxury of such a life as she had led this evening for an hour and a half.

One moment at home was enough to convince Sally that no magician had been at work. It was the same squalid house, and the same squalid room that she reached after the splendour of her dinner. And it was the same fretful mother who complained of her lateness and chided her for the dangers she ran in being about the streets so late. Sally made no answer. She looked in the mirror at the dilated pupils of her glowing eyes, and at her flushed cheeks and laughing lips; and her heart first sank and then violently rebelled against the contrast of this hideous place with the light and colour she had left. She was a rebel. The contrast was too great. How could she live in a room like this? How could anybody live? It was not life at all, but a mere grovelling. And Sally had tasted something that thrilled her. She had come into contact with a life resembling the life led by those who travelled in the motor broughams she so much admired. She was ravenous for such a life. Her natural arrogance was roused and inflamed by the comparison she so instinctively made between her natural surroundings and those to which she felt she was entitled by her capacities. She thought with contempt of the other girls at Madame Gala's. The wine she had drunk, the noises she had heard, mounted higher. She was primed with conceit and excitement. Hitherto she had only determined by ambition to use the world and attain comfort and success. Now she felt the power to attain this success. She could not experience the feeling without despising every other feeling. She looked round the room in scorn—at the dull, shabby bed, and the meagre furniture, and at the little old woman who sat by the empty fireplace with so miserable an air of confirmed poverty. She looked higher, at Miss Jubb, and saw afresh the stupid incompetence of such a creature. Even old Perce and Mrs. Perce led in her new vision a life that was good enough for them, but not good enough for Sally. There was a better way, and Sally would not rest until she had secured that way. And she had the opportunity opening to her. Gaga had shown her as much. With the vehement exaggeration of youth that is still half-childhood, Sally saw her own genius. She felt that the world was already in her grasp. She felt like a financier before a coup. She felt like a commander who sees the enemy waver. For this night triumph seemed at hand, through some means which the heat of her brain did not allow her to analyse, but only to relish with exultation.

x

In the morning Sally had a heavy head as the result of her unusual entertainment, and she awoke to a sense of disillusion. The room was the same ugly room, but her dreams had fled. So must Cinderella have felt upon awaking after her first ball. The colours had faded; the rapturous consciousness of power had died in the night. Sally felt a little girl once more, younger and more impotent than she had been for months. The walk to Regent Street restored her. She once again imagined herself into the talk with Gaga; she stressed his offer of friendship and his plea for help. It would be all right; it was all right. She had made no mistake. Only, she was not as carelessly happy as she had been in the first realisation. She had recognised that the battle was not yet won, and that much had still to be done before she could claim the victory which last night had seemed in her hands. At all events, hatred of her little ugly home was undiminished. She felt horror of it.

Arrived at the work room, Sally saw it in a new light. She was permanently changed. The girls had become nothing; even Miss Summers had become a very good sort of woman, but subtly inferior. There was not one of the girls who could help Gaga as she was going to do; not one of them who could earn the advantages which Sally was going to reap. She settled almost with impatience to work which last night had been left unfinished. All the time that she was engaged upon it her thoughts were with other prospects, other deliberate intentions. She was restless and uneasy—first of all until she had seen Gaga and gauged her effect upon him in the morning's grey, finally because another secret conflict was going on beneath her attention. She did not understand what she was feeling, and this made her the more easily exasperated when cotton knotted or a sudden noise made her head throb. "I'm out of sorts," she thought. She tried to laugh in saying: "The morning after the night before." Her malaise was something more than that.

Gaga came into the room during the morning, haggard and anxious-looking. The lines in his pallid face were emphasised; his eyes had a faintly yellowish tinge like the white of a stale egg. In shooting her first lightning observation of him Sally clicked "Bilious." There was a little smile between them, and Gaga went out of the room again, languid and indifferent to everything that was occurring round him. Sally had an impulse to find some reason for going into his room, but she did not dare to go. She sewed busily. Perhaps she would see him later. She peeped into the room at lunch-time, but he was not there, and in the afternoon she heard from Miss Summers that he was unwell, and would not be coming back that day. She heard the news with relief; but also with sudden fright. If—if—if he should have become afraid of her! If he should have repented! If, instead of allowing her to help and to benefit, Gaga should become her enemy! Men were so strange in the way they behaved to girls—so suspicious and funny and brusque—that anything might have happened in Gaga's mind. Sally recollected herself. This mood was a bad mood; any loss of self-confidence was with her a sign of temporary ill-health. She magnificently recovered her natural conceitedness. She was Sally.

In the evening she went home early, to her mother's interest and pleasure; but there was nothing to do at home and the atmosphere was insufferable. It drove her forth, and she walked in the twilight, longing for Toby to be with her. He would not have understood all she was thinking—he would angrily have hated most of it—but his company would have distracted her mind and occupied her attention. She thought of Toby at sea on this beautiful evening, with the stars pale in an opal sky; and she could see him standing upon the deck of the "Florence Drake" in his blue jersey without a hat, with the breeze playing on his crisp hair and his brown face. A yearning for Toby filled her. Tears started to her eyes. She loved him, she felt, more than she had ever done: she needed him with her, not to understand her, but to brace her with the support of his strong arms. Sally dried her eyes and blew her nose. "Here!" she said to herself. "Stop it! I'm getting soppy!"

She presently passed the ugly building of a Board School, not the one which she had attended, but one nearer her present home. Outside it, and within the railings protecting the asphalted playground from the footpath, was a notice-board upon which was pasted a bill advertising the evening classes which would be held there during the Autumn Session. Idly, Sally stopped to read down the list of subjects—and the first that caught her eye, of course, was dressmaking. She gave a sniff. Funny lot of girls would go to that. Girls trying to do Miss Jubb out of a job. Sally glimpsed their efforts. She had seen girls in dresses which they had made themselves. Poor mites! she thought. Paper patterns for somebody twice their size, and bad calculations of the necessary reductions. Tape-measures round their own waists, and twisted two or three times at the back, which they could not see. Blunt scissors, clumsy hands, bad material.... It was a nightmare to Sally. She did not go far enough to imagine the despairs, the aching hands, the tears, which attended the realisation of an evening's botch. She was not really a very humane person. She had both too much imagination for that infirmity of the will, and not enough. She passed from dressmaking to the other subjects.

There was one that made her jump, so much did it seem to be named there for her own especial benefit. It was "Book-keeping." Sally was taken aback. She scanned the details. Two lessons a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, at eight o'clock. A disdain filled her. She would not be as the other girls. She would learn book-keeping. She would understand figures. Then she could help Gaga with precisely that work which he confessed himself unable to do. Sally memorised the details. It was enough; she was ready for anything. As the following Monday was the first night of the session she would be present then.

And so, her ambition mounting once more to arrogance, Sally returned to bed and her mother, and bread and margarine, and the dingy room on the second-floor-back.

xi

The book-keeping class was held in one of the ordinary classrooms, separated from others by high partitions of wood which were continued to the ceiling in panes of glass. The room was filled with forms and desks, but the class was so small that all those composing it (and there were fewer still after the first six lessons) were put into the first two or three rows of desks. The teacher was a little sandy man who made well-trodden jokes and talked in a wheezy voice well suited to his appearance. He used the blackboard, and stood upon tiptoe to scrawl upon it in a large handwriting. That was at the beginning. Later, methods developed; but for the present Sally and the others were merely initiated into the first movements of the difficult craft. With amazement she began to learn the mysteries of the signs "Dr." and "Cr.", the words "Balances", "carried forward", etc. and the meanings of such things as ruled diagonal lines. It was to her like the game of learning chess, and she had the additional pleasure of knowing that with the solution of each problem she was adding appreciably to her knowledge, and to a knowledge which henceforward would not be wasted, as she could turn it, as of all things she most desired, to immediate use. Madam's accounts would no longer be a source of trouble or bewilderment to her. She knew very soon that they would be mere child's play to her instructed intelligence.

From the teacher and the lessons, Sally turned to her fellow pupils. There were about twenty of these, the sexes almost equally represented, but with the girls in a slight majority. One or two of the young men were pale and spectacled, and so they did not interest her. The girls were generally of a higher class than her own, were obviously already employed as clerks in offices, and were rather older than herself. They were the daughters of tradesmen or clerks, and all lived at home in the better streets of the neighbourhood. They were neatly dressed, but she was easily the smartest of the audience. The other girls looked at her hair and her complexion, and then at each other; and a feud began. Sally was consoled by the evident interest of the young men, who often cast glances in her direction. She sat demurely, as if unconscious, but in her wicked heart there was glee at the knowledge that this same young person Sally, once the despised companion of May Pearcey, had in a year attained such new charm as to be attractive to these young men. She shrugged her shoulders at the thought of it. Had she been an onlooker she would have been amused or cynical. As she was the cynosure of the emotional eye of the whole class she could view the natural processes of all such gatherings with satisfaction. Her shrugs were for the respectable and alienated girls, who were like sparrows chattering over a brilliant intruder; to the young men she offered an air of imperviousness to their cajoleries which made her seem to at least three of them a young person whom it might be pleasant and titillating to know. The general arrangement of feelings towards her was evident at the third lesson. By the fourth it had taken a quite definite form. She had exchanged conversation with the three men: she had smiled provokingly at the girls. The girls mentioned her at home, and to their friends; the young men did not mention her to anybody.

The men were all older than she, were in employment, and although some of them were still at home the majority of them were in lodgings in Holloway, were lonely, and were desirous of improving their positions. This was the case with Sally's three admirers. Of the three, her immediate favourite, because he most nearly resembled Toby in physical type, was a thickset dark young man with a budding black moustache and polished eyes and a strong pink upon his cheekbones. But after she had looked at him a few times she decided that he had Jewish blood, and Jews were among her aversions. So, although his name was Robertson, she passed him over in favour of a tall, rather bony fair youth of about three and twenty with smooth hair and a lean, conceited humorous face. He had assurance, which she adored, and his great length made it queer to be talking to him, because she had to look high up to see his face. He always wore a light-coloured tweed suit, and a knitted tie of about ten different colours, and his aquiline nose and jaunty manner gave him an air of knowingness which she much appreciated. He was a stockkeeper in a publishing house, and came from the South of England. His voice was light in tone, and he had a delightful burr. This young man, Harry Simmons, became her friend and soon walked part of the way home with her after each lesson. He talked politics to her, and explained all sorts of things which she had never before known. He told her how books were made, and how they were delivered unbound in great bales; and when she said "a book" meaning "a paper," he corrected her. Sally liked him. Of the three men she now knew well he was the best-informed. Accordingly she learnt more, intellectually, from him than from either of the others. He quickly fell in love with her, which was an added pleasure; and she once or twice let him kiss her, without promising anything or revealing the existence of Toby. She never kissed Harry in return, a fact which she cherished as a proof of her innocence. But she liked him very much, and told him more about herself than she had ever told anybody else. And as there is nothing like the use of such care and such flexible and uncertain kindness, when it is not calculated, for tantalising a young man who is agreeably in love with a young girl, Sally had a new delight, a new self-flattery, to cosset. The affair did not become very desperate in Harry's case—he was too conceited, and he knew the rules of the game too well—and at length it subsided normally; but it lasted pleasantly and instructively enough for perhaps four months, and the memory for both was one of smiling amusement, untempered by chagrin. Sally's one dread in the whole course of her friendship with Harry was a dread lest Toby should see them together. That Harry should see her with Toby she did not mind, because she could at any time have relinquished Harry without a qualm; but she loved Toby, and took care to keep secret from him on their infrequent meetings anything which might disturb his ardent thoughts of the little girl he had left at home.

So book-keeping went on. And so Harry went on. But by now Sally's interests had become many, for she was leading a busy life, and the difficulty of maintaining all her affairs at the necessary pitch of freshness and importance in her attention was increasing. She had to think of her work, of Madam and her now frequent fits of illness, of Gaga, of Miss Summers, of money, of Harry, of book-keeping, of clothes, and of her mother. Mrs. Perce she rarely saw during this period, because as Sally found new preoccupations she was bound to shed some of her old ones. She thought very nicely of Mrs. Perce; but she had at the moment no time for her. Mrs. Perce belonged to a passing stage, and had not yet a niche in the new one. Toby she saw still more seldom than anybody; but for Toby Sally's feelings underwent no obvious change. They developed as her character matured, but they did not alter. She embraced him, as it were, with her mind. Toby was somehow different from all the others. He was a part of herself. She did not know why, but he stood alone, whenever she thought of him, wonderfully strange, and strong, and enduring, as much Toby as she was Sally. She did not fear him. In some ways she despised him, for being so little pliable, so little supple in his way of managing the world. But she adored him as a man, and as a simple-minded baby who unerringly made her happy by his assurance, and flighted her by behaving as though she was something belonging solely to himself. So long as she was confident that about nine-tenths of her life was outside the range of Toby's understanding, Sally enjoyed his delusion. It gave her such a sense of superiority that she relished her submission to his will in all trifles. She never felt that his absences made him a stranger. Rather, she felt that they increased and intensified her love and her desire for him. These at least were unabated—more ardent than ever. And the absences certainly made Toby all the more boisterously glad to see her whenever he returned from a voyage, and more demonstratively affectionate when they were alone together.

xii

Madame Gala had returned to work and Gaga had gone into the country by the time Sally had joined her book-keeping class; and so that matter seemed to be in abeyance. The ease with which the fabric of her newest plan had been made to collapse discomfited Sally, who was always impatient for quick results; but she did not abandon hope. She believed in her star. She had seen very little of Gaga since their dinner. He had avoided her, with some tokens of slight constraint, although his greetings had been almost furtively reassuring. That alone would have made her believe that he had not forgotten his promise. Sally bade despair stand back. Always, hitherto, she had found her own level: she would do it again in this instance. She had the grit of the ambitious person who succeeds. Hers was not a vague or unwarrantable conceit: she would work for its fulfilment. It is the mark of the great.

While she was waiting, she one day received a letter from Toby, announcing his imminent arrival in London. He would wait outside Madame Gala's, and they would spend his leave together. It was now the beginning of October, and a fine Autumn had begun. The days, although rapidly growing shorter, were warm and cordial. They were better than the summer days. There was a crispness in the air, but there was no chill. Filled with pleasure, Sally wore her prettiest clothes that morning, and Toby was waiting in the sunshine at the corner of the street, and they met with light hearts. It was just one o'clock. At once they found a tea-shop, and had lunch; and then Toby sprang upon her a proposal that they should go to Richmond for the afternoon, and to Brighton the following day. He appeared to have plenty of money for both jaunts. He had planned them as soon as he knew the date of his arrival.

"O-o-o!" cried Sally. "Brighton! The sea! Will you take me out in a boat? Better not: I should be sick. Take me on the river this afternoon, instead. No: we'll just walk in Richmond Park. Ever been to Kew, Toby? The girls say it's lovely there. What's Brighton like? I went there once when I was a kid. Wasn't half fine. What d'you do there? Sit on the beach and throw stones in the water? We might paddle. Like to see me paddling? What time do we start?"

"Here, hold on," said Toby. They were walking to catch a Richmond omnibus. "You ask a lot of questions and don't wait for no answers. I say ... look at that young woman there.... Look at her!"

"Well?" demanded Sally. "It's only because her shoes don't fit. She doesn't know how to wear high heels. That's all it is. That frock cost a bit."

"Did it?" Toby jerked his head. "Well, you ought to know, I suppose. It's not as smart as yours."

"D'you like it, Toby?" asked Sally, eagerly. He had never said anything before about her clothes. She was suddenly sportive with pride in his interest.

Toby nodded. He had been betrayed into his speech of approval. It was not natural to him.

"It's all right," he nonchalantly said. "I've seen worse."

Sally shook his arm, provoked by a variety of feelings. She loved him to tease her. How strange! She felt a hundred years older than Toby, and yet she felt like a little girl. And when she was with him she did not have to mind her tongue, but could be as slangy and as natural as she pleased. Toby did not know any better. She had not always to be thinking, with him, of what a real lady might be expected to say. He was a relaxation for her.

"That's right," she said. "Flatter me. Make me get swelled head. Don't think of the consequences. Ladle it out. Tell me I look a little princess."

"No, Sally. I wouldn't do that," answered Toby, possessively. "I don't want you to get above yourself. You're a bit uppish as it is. Noticed it? Well, I have. And that's a thing I want to talk to you about."

"Oh," said Sally in a dangerous tone. "What is? Look, there's a bus!"

With Sally's nimbleness and Toby's muscle they obtained seats upon the top of the bus, and, seated together, resumed their conversation in low, grumbling tones. She first repeated her question with new aggressiveness, not at all deterred from the possibility of a row by her delight in Toby's company.

"About you," said Toby. "You see, smartness is all very well; but if you're going to be a sailor's wife you got to look where you're going. Now, your last letter. It said you was being a good girl, and taking evening classes—that's because I told you my aunt see you out with a fellow one night, coming from the schools. Now what the Hell's the good of evening classes to a sailor's wife; and who is this fellow aunt seen you with?"

"I suppose even a sailor's wife wants to know how to cook," remarked Sally.

"Oh cooking," grimly said Toby. "Does the fellow learn cooking, too?"

Sally was impudent. She was enjoying herself. She rejoiced that he should be so jealous and authoritative when she knew that she could always play with him.

"I don't know which fellow your aunt saw," she answered flippantly. "There's so many of them at the classes. I can't tell which it might be. Did she tell you what he was like?"

"She told me you was arm in arm."

"That's a lie," said Sally, curtly. "Nosey old cat. She never saw me arm in arm with anybody. And even if I had been, what business is it of hers? What does she know about me? About me and you?"

"She see us last time I was home. See us twice. That's why she told me about you and this other fellow. See? She says—that girl I see you with seems to have got another young man—light come, light go."

"O-o-oh!" Sally gritted her teeth. "I would like to have your aunt by the back hair, Toby! Old cat! She's made it up, I expect. Interfering old beast! But, after all, there's a lot of fellows at the class, and we all come out together, and sometimes they walk a bit of the way home with me. That's all it is. Nothing to make a fuss about. I'm not a nun, got to pass men by on the other side of the road, am I?"

"Well, I won't have it!" cried Toby, restless in his seat. His dark face was darker. There was a red under his tan, and a gleam of his teeth that made him like an angry dog. "And that's enough of it. I won't have it. You belong to me. See? And if I catch another fellow nosing round I'll split his head open. Damned sauce! Just because I'm away, you think you can go marching about...."

He sulked for several minutes, frowning, and biting a torn thumbnail.

"What you done to your thumb?" demanded Sally taking it quickly between her own fingers. Toby made no answer, but, very flushed, drew his thumb away. With her chin a little out, and an air of quietly humming to herself, Sally looked at all the shops and houses upon their route, and at the people walking sedately upon the pavements. As it was Saturday afternoon, many of the West End stores were shuttered; but as the bus went farther west, and into suburban areas, there was great marketing activity. Sally watched all the people and observed all the shops with an absorbed childish interest that was almost passionate in its intensity. She took no notice of Toby for a quarter of an hour. He might not have been there. This was his punishment for being outspoken and suspicious. She was not going to have that sort of thing from anybody. But if Sally was supercilious, Toby was stubborn. Once his grievance had been voiced, and had been taken flippantly, he was reduced to glowering. At Sally's continued disregard, and after a going over in his own mind of all they had said, Toby began to feel uncomfortable. He began to feel a fool. At the precise moment when his sensation of foolishness was strongest upon him, Sally turned and slipped her arm within his, and pressed his elbow warmly against her side. They did not speak; but peace was made. Presently Sally began to draw Toby's attention to things they passed, and although at first he was surly in his responses, Toby was gradually and surely appeased by her masterly handling of him. He was not free from suspicion—she did not want him to be, because it enhanced her value; but he was dominated by her cajolery.

When they arrived in Richmond, and had climbed the hill, and had looked down from the Terrace Gardens upon that lovely piece of the Thames which is to be seen from the height, Sally and Toby walked arm in arm about the Deer Park. They saw the leaves falling, quite yellow, although the trees were still dense with foliage; and the crisp air exhilarated them. In the sun it was hot and dazzlingly bright.

"Tell me about what you've seen, Toby," suddenly asked Sally.

"Seen?" Toby fumbled a minute in his mind. "What d'you mean—seen?"

"At sea, and when you go ashore. You know. Ships and places."

Toby looked puzzled. "Well, what's there to tell?" he questioned. "A ship's a ship. You wouldn't understand if I was to tell you I'd seen a schooner, or a barque, or a cattle-boat, or a dinghy." He was rather lofty. "I mean, you wouldn't know."

"How do you know, then? How can you tell the difference?" she persisted.

Toby laughed at the fact that she had not recognised how he had slipped in the dinghy among recognisable ships. He had supposed everybody knew what a dinghy was. He pointed that fact out to Sally, who could not see that she had betrayed such glaring foolishness. Pressed to confine himself to comparable vessels, Toby condescendingly resumed:

"It's a question of the size, and the rig.... All that." He was elaborately the expert, sure that an amateur could never understand. Sally might have retorted with baffling words about seams and camisoles and voile; but she was shrewd in mystic silence. "You'd have to see the ships.... Then I could point it all out to you. I mean, a gunboat or a cruiser or a trawler.... What I mean, they're different. See a big liner going out from Liverpool: I tell you, it's a sight. Flocks of people, and the old thing moving along like grease. Leaves you standing. At first you don't half feel a fool. But on a boat like ours there's no time to look about. We're under-manned. That's what it is. Not enough of us to make it light for everybody. Ought to be altered. Got to be doing chores the whole time. Swabbing down, cooking——"

"Can you cook?" Sally was swift, arch, incredulous.

Toby grinned. Then he remembered her classes—her "cooking" classes—and his aunt's message, and grew suddenly serious.

"Look here, Sally. That cooking. I don't like them other fellows," he said. "I mean to say, meeting them at classes, and walking home, and that."

Sally held his arm tightly. A look of scorn appeared upon her face. In her heart a feeling arose of impatience and amused enjoyment of his concern about a thing that was to her so trivial compared with her love for himself.

"You going to begin that again?" she demanded. "Silly. Here, put your face down. There! D'you think I don't love you. Think I don't believe you're worth ten of those others? Well, I do. And that's enough of that."

Toby was obstinate. He wanted her to be his property. Nevertheless, his tone was milder.

"It's not right, Sally, you going about with other fellows. What I mean, you think it's all right, but what do they think?"

"I don't care what they think. I don't care what anybody thinks, except you. And if you don't trust me, well...."

Toby was manifestly terrified at the removal of her arm from his. He caught it again, but she wrenched free. For a few moments they walked along together in dead silence, gloomy and disunited. Toby clenched his fists. He looked about him, and uneasily rocked his head and cleared his throat. Sally knew that he was reassuring himself by saying internally that if that was the tone she was going to take....

"You see...." he began.

"Oh, shut up!" cried Sally, savagely. "I've had enough of it." A moment later he heard a little sob from her, and moved close, overcome with his consternation. At his touch she started away. Here it was that Toby's physical strength served. He was easily able to put his arms round her, and hold her closely. A voice from the faintly struggling Sally wailed: "You don't trust me.... You'd better get some other girl...."

"I do! I do!" Toby swore. "Damn it all, Sally. I mean to say...."

"Bring me out ... make me miserable...." came the strangled little voice.

Toby was conquered. Sally knew that she had him at her mercy. She had known it all along. She had been enjoying herself, enjoying this second quarrel as much as the first one, because she knew exactly what the outcome would be. A quarrel is always worth while to a loving girl, for the sake of the reconciliation. They were the sweetest moments of the day, because in them was begun the true softening of hearts and rousing of the emotions which later gave them so much delight. Toby and Sally were happy all the rest of the afternoon and evening, and loved one another; and when it was dark, and none could observe them, Toby kissed Sally with all the fervour that he had saved up in his long days away from her. He kissed her lips and her cheeks and her eyes, and crushed the life out of her with his powerful arms. And Sally, at first laughing, had grown quieter and quieter in his arms as her joy in his love had deepened. They stood there, far above the river, in the gloaming, with the leaves whispering and slowly floating down through the air as they fell from above. Presently the moon rose, and in the moonlight the two wandered together, and forgot all their plans and ambitions and jealousies. Both were given over entirely to the moment and to the passion of the moment, which was still as strong as it had ever been.

xiii

A fortnight passed. Gaga came and went. Sally had no word with him, because he could not speak to her in the workroom or in his mother's room, and because she never met him (as she half expected to do) in the street. Sally often thought of their evening together, but gradually, as Gaga took no further step, she became sceptical about his plan, and she hardened towards him. Already her active mind was casting about for new outlets. She visited Mrs. Perce, and repaid ten shillings of the amount she owed her. She wrote to Toby, walked with Harry Simmons, had conversations with Miss Summers and Muriel and Mrs. Minto. And so the days passed. But at length Gaga took the awaited step. He met her one evening, as if by accident, upon the stairs, and immediately stopped. She had gone past him when Gaga found his tongue, and checked Sally's progress by a stammering. She waited.

"Er ... I never ... see you now," he began. Sally looked up at his tall figure, thrown sharply into relief by the clear light from a window upon the stairs, and by the pale grey distemper of the wall behind him. Again she noticed that creeping redness under the grey of his cheeks, and the almost liquid appeal which he directed at her. "I ... er ... I meant to ask you.... To-morrow...."

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Bertram! I'd love to," cried Sally, quickly. He was passionately relieved, as she could see. Not only by her acceptance of his intended suggestion, but at the salvation of his tongue.

"At the corner? Seven o'clock? At the corner? Where ... where ... where we met before? Really? Fine!" He nodded, and took off his hat, and climbed the stair. Sally, very sedate, descended. Well, she was still all right, then. How strange, she was quite cool! She was not at all elated! That was because of the delay, which had encouraged indifference; but it was also because the invitation was expected and because Sally was no longer to be shaken as she would have been by a novelty. She was ready. She was once again a general surveying the certainties of combat with a foe inferior in resources to herself.

So the next evening she deliberately stayed later than the other girls, and worked on with a garment which had occupied her attention all the afternoon. She was doing some plain embroidery upon a silk frock. It was upon this occasion that she received a great mark of favour from Miss Summers. Miss Summers, trusting Sally entirely, showed her how to lock the door after her. She had just to slip the catch, and slam the door, and nobody could enter the room without first using a key. And Miss Summers went, leaving Sally alone in the workroom. It was a thing hitherto unknown. It showed trust which had never been given to one of the other girls. Apart from Madam and Gaga, if one or both of them should still be working in Madam's room, Sally was at liberty, and in sole occupation of the establishment. It did not occur to Sally to think so; but Miss Summers would never have given her this privilege if she had not known that Madam also would approve. It would have been too dangerous a responsibility for Miss Summers unsupported. Madam must have seen that petty theft was a thing which did not tempt Sally. She was too ambitious for that, and obviously so. Keen judge of character as Madam was she must have known it all. But neither Madam nor Miss Summers could have realised—as both, with their experience of girls, should have done—that there were possibilities other than theft. Sally had listened to the explanation of the door catch, and had promised to shake the door when she left, so as to make sure that it was fast; but her only conscious thought had been one of surprise and delight that she should be left alone. Alone to do as she pleased. Alone to sing, dance, loiter. Alone, perhaps, with Gaga. At that notion she had a curious little thrill of excitement. Her eyes became fixed for a moment. She did not speak, or give any other sign. She was not thinking. Merely, her general awareness was pierced by a sudden ray.

Had she been sure that Gaga was by himself in the next room, Sally would have found some excuse to go in there. It would have been such an opportunity as she had never had before. But although she went close to the door, and listened eagerly, there was no sound within. The room might have been empty. Or Madam might be there; and if Sally sang, which would please Gaga, Madam might come out, find her in the workroom without real excuse, and give her the sack. Sally was too wise to believe that in such a case Gaga could save her. She could imagine him stammering a defence, and being crushed, and perhaps being kind to her for a little while and fussing about to find her a job elsewhere. And that would be the end of that. She neither sang nor whistled. Every now and then she again listened, until she was impatient with uncertainty. Her impatience made her laugh. Fancy being impatient for seven o'clock! And for Gaga! It wasn't natural. It was—like Gaga himself—ridiculous.

Seven o'clock struck before she was ready; but Sally did not care. She had no objection to the thought of Gaga waiting in patience at the corner of the street. Toby would have been a slightly different matter. Not that she was more afraid of Toby now than she was of Gaga. All the same, she would not have kept him waiting. Neither Toby nor Gaga would have kept Sally waiting. Toby would have been punctual; Gaga had been standing at the corner already for five minutes. It was a curious moral effect that Sally had. She was not to be treated lightly. Even now, she was learning her power, and in this case she was illustrating it. She did not join Gaga until she was satisfied that every smallest fold in her dress was in perfect order, her hat precisely at the desired angle, her gloves buttoned. Then, shutting the door with a steady bang which rendered any shaking needless, she kept her appointment, not a timid dressmaker's assistant, but a woman of the world. At seventeen—for she had not yet reached her eighteenth birthday, although it was now very near—she was more of a woman of the world than she would be at twenty-eight, when her first intuitions had been blunted by actual experience.

Gaga was standing thoughtfully leaning upon his walking stick. His shoulders were bent, and the slim, and rather graceful, outline of his figure made him appear almost pathetic in his loneliness. Sally—Sally the hard and ambitious—was struck by a sharp irritation and pity, almost by compunction. She did not know what her feeling for Gaga was; but principally it was composed of contempt. He had good looks, and he had money. He could help her at present as nobody else could do. But at heart Sally dismissed him with a word which, to her, was fatal. He was soppy. Not mad, not altogether stupid, but painfully lacking in vital energy and confidence. Of all things Sally best loved assurance, and Gaga had none of it. He drooped in waiting, and the message of his fine clothes was contradicted by his pose, and not reinforced by it.

"I'm sorry I'm late," she said perfunctorily, at his start of recognition and delight. Gaga's face changed completely. From one of gloom, his expression became one of joy. "I didn't notice the time. I was working there alone— Miss Summers had gone. I was finishing something. I didn't know if you'd gone or not. I couldn't hear anything from Madam's room. Didn't like to knock, or anything."

Gaga said nothing. He walked by her side, and Sally looked up at him almost as she might have done at a policeman or a lamp-post. He was tall, she thought, when he straightened his back. And he dressed like a prince. At that instant she was proud to be walking by his side. She thought: "I must look a shrimp beside him! Him so big—so tall, and me so little. But I'm as smart as he is, any day in the week. Wish he always held himself up like that! What salmony lips he's got, and ... it's his long lashes that make his eyes look so soft. Chocolate eyes.... Funny! He's got a weak chin. No, his chin's all right. It's ... you can't see his jaw at all: goes right in, and gets lost. And a funny nose—got no shape to it. Just a nose." She had the curiosity to wonder what his grey cheek felt like. She would like, one day, to touch it with her finger, just to see. It looked dry and soft. All this she glimpsed and considered like lightning while they walked quickly towards Piccadilly Circus; and her notions gathered and grew in Gaga's silence.

"Were you working?" Sally presently asked, trying to say something to begin a conversation.

Gaga shook his head, stealing a shy glance down at her.

"No. Not working," he said. "I had rather a headache, so I went for a walk in the Park."

"Oo. Sorry you've got a headache." Sally unconsciously became sympathetic. "Is it very bad? It's nerves, I expect. If you're nervous you have splitting headaches. My mother's always talking about her head. She gets so tired, you know; and it goes to her head; and she sits still and can't think about anything else. Is ... is Madam quite well now? She was looking so ill...."

Gaga became mournful. The mention of his mother always, it seemed to Sally, made him miserable. Silly Gaga! He then did something which had an imperceptible effect upon Sally's thought of him. It was a mistake, because it illustrated his lack of initiative and his powerlessness to strike out a fresh path. He made straight for the Rezzonico again. He ought to have taken Sally to another restaurant; but he instinctively took her to the place where they had dined happily before. In that he betrayed to her merciless judgment the fact of his inexperience. Silently, they entered the big dining-room. The band was not playing at the moment, and, as they were early, the room was less full than it had been upon the first occasion. The enormous mirrors reflected their hesitating movements. Gaga made his way vaguely towards their former table; but Sally laid a hand upon his arm. It was time for her to take command. Into her expression there crept the faintest hardness, almost a tough assurance, that was tinged with the contempt which was her deepest feeling for Gaga.

"Couldn't we get a table against the wall ... down there?" she demanded, pointing.

It was done. They were installed, and a young and rapid waiter was attending to them. This time Sally helped to choose the dinner. She could not read the menu, because she knew no French; but the waiter, with an uncanny insight, realised that he would do well to address her and to explain the dishes to Sally instead of to Gaga; and so, to the relief of all three, they were quickly served, and wine was brought, and Sally began to feel creeping upon her all the old pleasure and excitement of noise and wine and an intriguing situation. Her hardness vanished. She sat almost with complacency, breaking her roll with two small hands, and looking at Gaga with that thin little grin which caused her meagre face to be so impish and attractive. The brilliant lights which made Sally more and more piquante had a ghastly effect upon Gaga. His grey cheeks were cruelly betrayed.

"I'm afraid mother's ... mother's not what she ought.... I'm afraid mother's ill," began Gaga, stammering. Then, impulsively: "I say.... I'm so glad you came to-night. I.... I've been—you know, my head— I've been miserable, and.... I've been bad-tempered all day. But I'm better now. Couldn't help ... feeling better, seeing you there...."

Sally grinned again. If her cheeks had been plumper he could have seen two dimples; but all that was observable was the row of tiny pointed teeth that made her smile so mischievous. Sally's eyes looked green in the electric light—green and dark and dangerous, like deep sea; and her pallor was enhanced, so that she was almost beautiful. There was something both naive and cat-like in her manner, and the tilt of her head. She surveyed Gaga with eyes that were instinctively half-closed. She could delightedly perceive the effect she was having upon him. He sometimes could not look at her at all, but fixed his attention upon his plate while she was speaking, or no higher than her neck when he was himself—as he rarely did—making an attempt to entertain. And all Gaga's hesitations and shynesses made Sally amused and sure of herself, and she began to take pleasure in dominating him. When she found that Gaga not only did not resent this, but was pleased and thrilled by her domination, Sally grew triumphant. She chose the sweet for them both, sweeping her eye down the prices and listening to the waiter's translation of each title. She sipped her wine with a royal air of connoisseurship. And she kept such control of the situation that Gaga was afraid to give words to the timid ardour which shone from his expressive glance. Sally was herself: it was still she who conferred every favour, and not Gaga.

Presently she had a thought that whipped across her mind like a sting.

"D'you know what I've been doing since we came here before?" she demanded. "I've been taking lessons in book-keeping. I'm getting on fine. The teacher says I've got a proper head for figures. He says I shall be a cashier in no time, and understand all that you can know about accounts. Isn't that good? So I shall be able to help you—like you said...."

Gaga gave an admiring gesture. He was overwhelmed.

"Oh, but you're ... marvellous!" he cried. "Simply marvellous! Here's Miss Summers says you're the best hand, for your age, that she's got...."

"Did she say that?" Sally jumped for joy. "Really?" She gave a triumphant laugh, so naive and full of ingenuous conceitedness that Gaga was overcome afresh with admiration.

"You ought to have been two people," he answered. "Two little girls."

"Half a dozen!" Sally proclaimed. "You see, I'm—it sounds conceited, and I expect I am; but it's true— I'm clever. I'm not soppy. Other girls— Rose Anstey.... They're soppy. They can't do anything. I can do all sorts of things because I'm clever— I can sew, and ... you know, all sorts of things."

Gaga glowed at her words.

"I know," he eagerly agreed. "That's why you're so wonderful. Most girls can only do one thing. They can't even do that very well."

"That's true. Takes them a week to do it; and then somebody has to do it over again for them. They haven't got any brains. They got no sense. They don't think." Sally was impetuous.

"They've got no brains at all," said Gaga. "They're like vegetables." Both laughed, in great spirits and familiarity. "Well, Sally.... My mother's.... She's a wonderful woman, too. She's been marvellous. Marvellous! She must have been like you...."

Sally shrugged.

"Bigger than me," she murmured, brooding upon an unwelcome comparison.

"No. Not bigger. She's nearly three times as old as you. My father died, you see.... I was a child. She had to make a living. Had to."

"So have I got to," whispered Sally. "I got no father; and mother's in her second childhood."

Gaga stopped. He looked at her. A singular expression crossed his face.

"Now, you have to," he said. "Er, I mean.... Well, ... you won't always."

"Mean, I'll marry?" demanded Sally, sharply. "Give it all up to cook the dinner and wash the front step?" She shrugged again.

Gaga reddened slightly.

"I.... I didn't think you'd do that," he said, hesitatingly. "I only meant.... What I wanted to say ... mother's not well. She's ill. She's really ill. She'll have to take a holiday. I wonder...." His hesitation was more prolonged than usual. He became as it were lost in a kind of doubtful reverie. Sally could not tell whether he was thinking or whether the wheels of his mind had altogether ceased to revolve. His mouth gaped a little. At last he concluded: "I wonder if I could ... if I could borrow you from Miss Summers. If she'd mind. If she'd let you go."

There was a silence, while both thought of this possibility.

"Look here," cried Sally, confidently. "Like this evening, Miss Summers left me there—all alone. I mean to say, she didn't mind. She wouldn't leave any of the other girls like that; but she left me. She knew it was all right. Well, I wouldn't mind stopping in the evenings and helping you. I'd like to. I'm quick. I could get through a lot of work."

"Oh, but it wouldn't be fair," he objected.

"Why not? I'd love it. See, I'd get overtime."

Sally was really prompting Gaga in this last sentence. He frowned, and moved one of his long hands impatiently across some crumbs which lay before him on the table.

"Oh, money...." he said. "More than overtime. We'd.... I say, it's splendid of you. It's a splendid way to do it."

"Would you like it?" breathed Sally, her heart beating faster at the implication. Gaga reddened. His lips were pressed together.

"It would be perfect!" he cried, vigorously.

"How lovely!" Sally's face broke once more into that expressive grin. They sat smiling at each other, almost as lovers do who have stumbled upon an unsuspected agreement in taste. The mood lasted perhaps a minute Then it changed ever so slightly. "Would Madam mind?" next urged Sally.

Gaga's face clouded. She was watching him breathlessly, and saw his fists clenched. His tongue moistened the lips so lately compressed. His head was inclined. At last, dubiously, he spoke.

"I wonder," he muttered. "I haven't said anything to her. I don't think...." His face fell still more, until it was undetermined. "I'm afraid.... I'm afraid ... perhaps she mightn't like it. You see, she's ... she's ... rather.... She doesn't like anybody.... She mightn't quite ... understand."

Sally's contentment vanished abruptly. Her heart became fierce, and her tone followed. It was rough and hard, with a suggestion of despair and of something less than respect for Gaga.

"It's no good!" she cried. "It's no good. I'm a girl. Girls can never do anything! A man can do all sorts of things; but, just because she is a girl, a girl can't do one of them!"

She was watching him all the time she was speaking, and only half realised that her indignation was warmly simulated in order to produce an effect upon him and stiffen a wavering determination. For a moment Gaga did not speak. He was turning the matter over in his mind, and Sally saw the changes of opinion that passed across his face. Weakness, submission, obstinacy, bewilderment were all to be observed. Above all, weakness; but a weakness that could be diverted into defiance through dread of her own contempt. The moment was desperate. Tears sprang to Sally's eyes. She became tense with chagrin and stubbornness. A gesture would have swept her wineglass to the floor.

"Never mind!" she cried, savagely, now really moved to anger and despair. "You see how it is! I always knew it wouldn't be any good. Knew it! Oh, I ought to have...."

Gaga was roused. His voice, when he spoke, was strangled.

"Don't be silly!" he cried. "We'll do it ... er ... we'll ... somehow we'll do it." Sally waited, her anger cooling, a hope rising once again in her breast. Cruel knowledge of him surged into her thoughts. At last the determination she desired came from Gaga. He said, in a grim tone: "She needn't know. We won't tell her."

Sally's eyes closed for a moment. As if she had willed this, she had attained her end. No longer was there to be any doubt. They had an understanding. They were going to do something together which must be kept secret between themselves. She did not make even a tactical display of unwillingness. She too greatly desired the end to endanger (though it should be to confirm) her aim by any further display of finesse. It was enough. She was hot in her glimpse of the triumph she had secured. She would be able to stay. The rest of their evening was now unimportant, because they had need only to speak of details, and of matters unconnected with the plan.

xiv

Upon the day following this dinner and momentous conversation, Sally was working listlessly amid the hum of girls' chatter, which proceeded unchecked while Miss Summers was out of the room, when she had a singular knowledge of something in store. She was struck almost by fear. Quickly she looked up, and across at Rose Anstey, and beyond Rose to the door of Madam's room. Miss Summers stood in the doorway, smiling, and beckoning to Sally. Smiling—so it could not be anything.... Madam wanted Sally; but Madam would not tell Miss Summers.... Had she found out about Gaga? Sally's heart was like lead. But Miss Summers was smiling kindly and significantly, which she would not have done if she had thought the interview promised to be unpleasant. Besides, Gaga had said Miss Summers called Sally her best worker. It was nevertheless a nervous girl who went into the room, heard the door close behind her, and found herself alone with Madam.

The room was that tawny one in which Sally had first seen Madame Gala. It was lighted by one large window and it was not really a large room, although it contained Madam's enormous table and a bureau and a number of shelves upon which reference books stood. It was very quiet and cool in summer, and warm in winter; and Madam sat at her writing desk in a stylish costume unconcealed by any overall. Seated, she did not look so terrifyingly tall; but her faded eyes had still that piercing scrutiny which had disturbed Sally at the first encounter. Her face was lined; her hair bleached and brittle; but the long thin nose, and hard thin mouth, and parched thin cheeks all gave to her glance a chilling quality hard to endure. Her hands were those of a skeleton: all the bones could be seen white under the cream skin. Sally, abashed and full of flutterings of secret guilt, stood before her as she might have stood before one omniscient; but her brain was not abashed, and her hearing was as strained as her alert wits. So the two hard personalities encountered. Presently Madam smiled—a smile that was tortured, like Gaga's, and showed anaemic gums but a row of astonishingly good teeth.

"Sally," she said. "Sit down there, will you. Now, you've been here nearly a year. D'you know that? You were seventeen when you came. You're eighteen now.

"Nearly," interjected Sally.

"Well, when you came you had seven shillings a week. We're going to make it ten shillings from now. And of course overtime as usual. You understand that I don't want you to talk outside about your wages. At the end of what we call the financial year we may be able to give you more. I can't promise that. But Miss Summers tells me that you are a good and willing worker; and I can tell for myself that you are intelligent. I think it will be worth while for you to stay here; and if you go on as you have begun I shall hope to keep you. Now don't get the idea that you're indispensable. Don't get conceited. But be encouraged by knowing that I take an interest in you. That will do, Sally, thank you...."

"Thank you, Madam," responded Sally, demurely. She stood in an attitude of humility, a tremulous smile of candid satisfaction playing round her mouth.

Nobody in the workroom could have guessed from her manner the turbulence of Sally's emotions. Pleasure, relief, self-confidence struggled within her. She felt an enormous creature surveying a pigmy world; and yet, mechanically, she resumed her sewing at the point where she had left it. The other girls all turned inquisitive faces in her direction. Was it the sack? A row? A rise? Nothing at all? Sally was a baffling creature ... a white-faced cocket. She was deep. That word of Miss Rapson's had entered the hearts of the girls. Sally had heard it; she knew that they felt her superiority, and gaped at it with faint resentment. A flash told her now that they were all on tiptoe, and her nonchalance was a piece of acting which she enjoyed for its effect upon the others. She most mischievously enjoyed her privilege. And she had a new cause for triumph, a double success. She felt herself a schemer, an intriguer, which she was not. She was merely an opportunist, seizing the main chance. Not only had she a secret understanding with Gaga; she had also a secret understanding with Gaga's mother. She was most marvellously Sally Minto. The world was open to her. It was not the extra three shillings a week that intoxicated her: it was the sense of a difficult and engaging future. Her ambition had never been so strong. She turned her thoughts to the miserable room at home, to her mother, to Mrs. Perce. She wandered afield to the dinners with Gaga, to her recent talk with Madam. Not merely wealth, but power, seemed to lie ahead. She saw once more Madam's bad health; the probable exaltation of Miss Summers. If she took care, she would presently lie in the very heart of the business. Its accounts would be under her hand in the evenings; its work visible to her eye in the daytime. Miss Summers liked her and trusted her; she was sure of her own ability, her own shrewdness; without deliberately planning it, she had earned the good-will of the three people who really mattered, so far as her progress was concerned.

What if Madam were away ill? What if she died? Sally trembled at the prospect. She trembled lest some accident should interfere with what was otherwise inevitable. She knew that with Miss Summers she had no rival; her compact with Gaga was secure, unless his weakness betrayed them. Even here, she knew she might rely upon his integrity. Gaga would keep to his word. Sally saw herself installed as bookkeeper—oh, if she were only older! If she were older, if she were twenty-five, she would hold the business in the hollow of her hand. She was already learning how to speak to the ladies who came to give orders; her shrewdness would quickly show her which were good accounts and which required watching; and her work never grew careless. With each perception Sally's brain and her capacity for adapting herself to every circumstance seemed to expand. She was already much older than her years. With a little more experience she would be in a commanding position. But Madam must be ill, Madam must.... Madam must be very ill; and yet not before Sally had made sure of Gaga. Gaga was the key with which she would enter into her proper sphere. He must be her mascot.

With her head bent Sally stitched busily on, never allowing ambition to distract her from the immediate task. Baffled, the girls fell again to their work. That Sally Minto was deep—you couldn't tell what she was doing, what she was thinking. She was deep. Under her breath Sally was humming a tune, a familiar tune. A slow grin spread over her white face, and faded again. Looking up, she caught Miss Summers's eye, and smiled faintly, gratefully, reassuringly. She recognised at once how pleased and proud Miss Summers was at Sally's progress. If her mind had not been so busy, Sally would have felt a little warmth stealing into her heart; but she was not aware of anything except Sally Minto and her plans for worldly advancement. She for this moment saw Miss Summers also merely as an instrument, a plump, pussy-faced woman with an eternally cold nose and a heart quick to respond to the best efforts of her favourite hand.

xv

It was with a jump of excitement that Sally heard, in the following week, that Madam was very ill indeed. Gaga came in the morning with a haggard face, having spent the night by his mother's bedside. He had a few words with Miss Summers, who came out of the room with a comically solemn look upon her plump face. She made no remark to the girls, but at lunch time, when the others were out, or were dispersed in the part of the building where they were allowed to eat whatever they had brought for lunch, Sally stole into Madam's room and found Gaga there, sitting at the desk with his hands covering his face. When Sally approached him he did not seem to have heard her, but continued sitting thus lost in a depressed stupor. Sally knew that there was nobody in the room behind her: they were quite alone.

"Mr. Bertram!" she said, quietly. Still he made no response. Her heart quickened. Was he asleep? Was he—was he dead? She took a further step, and then spoke his name again. There was a slight movement. He was awake, and merely very unhappy and perhaps exhausted. With the slightest feeling of self-consciousness she advanced to Gaga's side, and laid a hand upon his shoulder. She could see the thinning hair upon the top of his head, and the long slim fingers pressed to his temples.

"Mr. Bertram, I'm so sorry," whispered Sally. Her arm slipped farther round his shoulders, and her breast was against his head, so gently pressing there that Gaga was only conscious of the faintest contact. He relaxed slightly, and his hands fell. Two gloomy eyes looked up into Sally's face. She withdrew her arm, standing now beside him, altogether apart.

"You made me feel queer," Sally went on. "Thought you were in a faint or something. Are you ill? Oh, say something, say something!"

All Sally's little thin body grew rigid as she spoke, for Gaga looked at her with an air of distraction. He seemed not to recognise her. His eyes were yellow and suffused, his mouth was open, his appearance that of one who was hardly sane.

"I'm all right," came at last with an effort from his dry lips. "All right, Sally. Only tired ... ever so tired." There followed a stiff attempt to smile, and then his face was hidden once again by the long hands. "My head's throbbing. It's like pincers in my head."

"Have you got any medicine?" she asked, quite moved by his weakness. "Go out and get some. Quick! Get a chemist to...." The head was slowly shaken. "You ought to. You can't do anything if you're ill. Can't do any work, or help Madam, or anything."

"Better presently," groaned Gaga. "That's ... that's all right, Sally. Good little girl to be so kind. I've been up all night. She's very bad, Sally; very bad. I've been up all night. Never mind; I'll be better presently." He relapsed into his former comatose state, nerveless and lethargic.

"You ought to get some sleep now. Go home to bed," urged Sally. "It's no good trying to work if you're sick. Go home now." She did not know how motherly, how caressing and wise, her voice had become. She was absorbed in his state of exhaustion and passivity. "It's not right," she went on. "You can't do any good. Get the doctor to give you something to make you sleep."

Gaga groaned again, still lost in his own sensations.

"No good," he murmured. "I can't sleep. That's what's the matter. Nothing does any good. I can't sleep—can't forget. Only sit here like this, and feel stupid. Never mind, Sally. Good little girl." He spoke thickly, like a man who has been drinking; but he was stupidly unshakable. She could do nothing with him. Having withdrawn her arm she could not again lay it upon his shoulders; but stood silent, feeling helpless and on tiptoe, with a sense of strain. She was not miserable nor anxious about him; she could almost hear her own voice, so nearly had detachment come upon her. And with something like cramp in her limbs, and paralysis of her ingenuity, she remained by his side, one hand resting for support upon Gaga's desk. Presently he withdrew one of his own hands, and patted hers; and as if that released her Sally went very quietly back to the workroom. There she saw two or three of the girls busy reading a paper, and in a little while Miss Summers came back and work was resumed. By the time Sally could again go into Madam's room Gaga had disappeared, and they did not see him all the following day.

xvi

Two days later he returned, and dully went on with his work as though it had no interest for him. Miss Summers had several times to suffer the ordeal of debilitating interviews; and towards the end of the afternoon was exasperated to tears. Sally could tell this from the sniffs and nose-rubbings that became more and more frequent. Miss Summers's eye-rims were quite pink, and her funny eyes were moist. She looked more than ever like a disconsolate tabby, and her hands were restless and clumsy. She had to ask Sally to thread her needle, and even to finish work that she was doing badly because of her agitation.

"Thank you, my dear," murmured Miss Summers. "So kind." Then, in a low tone, "Do for goodness' sake go in and see what Mr. Bertram's doing. He's quite absurd, like somebody mad. He's not in his senses, that's clear; and it's enough to drive anybody crazy."

Sally left the girls and slipped into Madam's tawny room. At her entrance Gaga gave a start, and his ruler fell clattering to the floor. But when he saw who was there his face brightened. A faint smile spread across the grey cheeks, making Gaga look so charming, in spite of his illness, that Sally was unexpectedly relieved. Her own smile was instantly responsive, and she stood almost roguishly before him in her short frock, and the demure pinafore which she was wearing over it.

"Miss Summers sent me," she explained. "Thought you might want some help."

Gaga shook his head, the smile still apparent. He shook his head again, trying to find words to express himself, and failing.

"No, Sally," he at last ventured. "No help. I'm better ... almost better, to-day. I can understand ... understand what I'm doing. I'm afraid ... er ... afraid I was very stupid the other day. I've thought of that since. Er.... I say.... I wish you'd ... come out to dinner to-night."

"Really?" Sally beamed upon him. She gave her little grin, and nodded. "If you'd like me to, of course I will. I'll be ready. Thank you very much."

Gaga made a heroic effort. He began to stammer, checked himself, and at last succeeded in imposing coherence upon his wandering words.

"It's you who ... ought to be thanked," he answered. "You cheer me up."

"Do I?" Sally's tone was eager, her reply instant. "I'm so glad. I like to feel I ... you know, cheer you. Does me good."

They exchanged shy smiles, and parted; Gaga to resume his labours, Sally to report his increasing sanity to Miss Summers. And then there followed the unwanted hours that always lie between the making of a desired appointment and the enjoyment of its arrival. Sally stitched with a will, for her anticipations for this evening were not of an ambitious kind. She knew all the time she was working that she looked forward to the outing, and she was not at all puzzled at her own expectancy, because in any case a dinner with Gaga would always make a break in her often monotonous days and evenings. But she could never altogether fail to make impulsive plans and it was as the result of unconscious reflection that she checked Gaga in the course of their walk together.

"Don't let's go to the Rezzonico," she said, quickly. "Let's go somewhere quiet."

As a result, they turned eastward, into the region of the smaller restaurants, and looked at several before Sally picked one called "Le Chat Blanc." It seemed to her to be the quietest and cleanest they had seen, and at any rate it would be a new experience to dine there. The doorway was modest, and the windows curtained low enough (in a red and white check) to permit a glimpse of the small but shining interior. Within, all was grey and white. Sally led the way into the place, and to a remote table, and seated herself with an air of confidence remarkable in one who dined, as it were, for the third time only. She glanced at the two waitresses—both very dark girls with earrings, who wore their black hair coiffed high upon their heads. They were Italians, agreeable and inquisitive; and the food-smells also were Italian and full flavoured. As soon as the two were seated they became the property of one of the two waitresses, who stood over them so maternally that she seemed to have no desire but for their good-fortune in choosing the meal aright. She plunged both Sally and Gaga into a muddle by her persuasive translations of the menu, but she made up for her linguistic deficiencies by this anxious interest and by a capricious smile. Scared and curious, they looked round the plain grey walls of the clean little room, and at the four or five other people who sat near them, and at the ceiling, and at each other.