Frank Swinnerton

The Merricks—Sally and Bertram—went for their honeymoon to Penterby, a little South of England town near the sea but not actually upon the coast. The honeymoon was to be a short one, the barest weekend, and so they could not go far from London; and for some reason Gaga could not stand the sea itself. Strong air made him ill, and even sight of rolling waves made him feel sick. Sally, still elated and not as yet very confident or assertive, immediately agreed when he suggested this country town; but she had no real notion of what was in store for her. She was all half-amused trepidation. The scuffled marriage-ceremony, after which the registrar's clerk hurried to call for her for the first time by her new name, was fun to her. It meant nothing: "I, Sarah, Margaret Minto, call on these present...." It was all a part of a game, a rather exciting game; and Gaga was no more to her after the ceremony than he had been before it. He was a tall agitated grey creature, very tremulous and muffled in his speech, and nothing like a husband. What was a husband? How did one feel towards a husband? All Sally knew was that her husband was a stranger. He was one man out of millions of men, no more and no less than the others. The thought that she was binding herself to him for life did not trouble her. It did not enter her head.

Nevertheless, she felt triumph at her wedding ring, and clutched Gaga's arm as they came out of the register office with their two casually-acquired witnesses. They were instantly alone, and walking along the street together in the autumn sunshine, married and excited, but merely two strangers on their way to lunch. And yet that was not quite all, because when they were seated at lunch Sally felt the slightest sensation of flurry at Gaga's possessive stare. She returned it boldly, quite unembarrassed; but across her mind flitted a knowledge which came there of its own accord. He was a weak man, weak in his possessiveness as he had been weak in his stammering; and the possessiveness (which in a strong man might have excited her) gave Sally an uncomfortable sense that Gaga might bother her. She had never realised this. She saw in this instant that he would be jealous, exacting, amorous. She did not love him, and the amorousness of the unloved is a bore. Sally knew she could always deal with Gaga; but she did not want a profusion of excited caresses from him. It was this realisation that gave her a jerk of dismay. It was not that she shrank from him. It was that with her cold little brain she imagined him in a fever about her, fretful, tantalised by her coolness, rebuffed, sulky, ineffably tedious.... As she knew all this her eyes darkened. It was all very well to play with Gaga; but he was now her husband, and that meant an association so constant that in future, so far from tempting him, she would forever be engaged in battles with his exasperating, petty claims to her person and her attention. He would not ever be able to understand her wish to be alone, or to be self-engrossed. Febrile himself, he would be dumfounded at her reserve, which he would take for hostility.

The knowledge came to Sally so unexpectedly that she did not respond to Gaga's unspoken appeals. The frown in her eyes deepened. All round her were the gilded mirrors of the Rezzonico, and the general noise and movement of a busy restaurant. Opposite was Gaga, smiling with a sort of joy which made his long face appear to shine. She could tell that he was almost beside himself with excitement. And she was cool. There was no current of understanding between them. They had neither physical nor spiritual rapport. Slowly Sally's gaze took in all that was revealed in Gaga's face and his nervously extended hands. Slowly a little cruel smile played round her small mouth. She had married him. She was sure of him. But there was a price. He would be a nuisance, a futile nuisance to her. He would demand kisses, he would pry, would watch her, would fuss. He would be a lover with all the empty ardour of the neurotic man. Sally's heart sank. She did not want a restrained lover, because she was young and high-spirited; but this singular trembling possessiveness would soon be intolerable. He would be a nuisance. Again and again the threat pressed itself upon Sally's consciousness.

Men! That was what Sally thought. She had no deliberate mental process. All her intuitions were summarised in the one word. Men! Toby.... Gaga! Gravely, she looked round the restaurant. There were fat men and thin men, dark and fair, ugly and good-looking and negligible. And as she looked at them in turn, puzzled, Sally shrugged her shoulders. She came back to Gaga. She gave him a false, alluring smile, secure in her power to excite him still further; but her gravity was constant. She had glimpsed for the first time a thing which she could not have known before marriage. It was that one married for different reasons, but that one had to endure the disadvantages accompanying any choice. She was not afraid, but she was ruffled. She was ruffled by that exulting possessiveness which shone from Gaga. Had she loved him, her joy might have been comparable with his. If she had loved him and he had seemed not to desire her, Sally's happiness would have been undermined. But in her present coolness, the sense that Gaga was personally inescapable was enough to depress her. He would be a nuisance.

She found it so when they were in the taxicab on their way to Victoria. Her smallness made her unable to stem the torrent of his excited caresses. For a time she submitted to them, still entirely serious. Then a kind of petulant composure enabled her to chill him. Gaga laughed in a sort of giggle, holding Sally's hands, and looking adoringly into her eyes, and trying to kiss her. Instead of giving him kisses, instead of wishing him to kiss her, Sally found herself aware already of a slight repugnance. As she looked forward to spending days and nights with him her heart sank. She was not shocked. She was not afraid. She knew that there would come a time when, after boring her, Gaga's kisses would become troublesome. And it was too late now to withdraw. She was too deeply into her new scheme of life. But this feverish, insatiably amorous, weak Gaga would get on her nerves. So this was what marriage might be. Sally's jaw stiffened. Yes, if she allowed it to be so. But Sally was Sally. Kisses should presently be favours. Gaga should learn his place. A hardness showed. She pushed aside the clinging arms, and sat erect.

"No," cried Sally, sharply, at his convulsive motion of return. "Not now. We're.... People looking at us...."

She did not want to be hard. She did not want to grow hard and bitter. She had seen women who were both, and she disliked them. But with Gaga she would have to be hard. Otherwise he would bore her to desperation. So there was at this moment no longer any softness in Sally's heart towards Gaga. She resented him. As they pushed through the crowd at Victoria, Sally had a sudden impulse to run away. A shudder fled through her. A girl with less resolute will, or perhaps of greater delicacy, would have made some movement. But Sally merely stood with her head lowered, and considered the position. It was not his love that she minded; it was his hysterical possessiveness, the sense that he would always be there and claiming convulsively those small incessant intimacies which accompany marriage. Sally could not put her perception into coherent terms; but she was assured of the fact. Gaga would want too much, and that not in an adorably masterful way, but with exacting and pertinacious excitement bred from his weakness and neurotic avidity. The domination of the weak man would be a tyranny, as it always is. Sally thought: "He'll be a nuisance. I shall want to do him in by the time we get back. Oh, Lor! You done for yourself, Sally, my gel! You come a mucker! Look at your husband! Look at him!" She could see Gaga in the distance, moving agitatedly about a porter and the guard, and tripping over luggage, and interrupting other eager passengers, and stretching his long arm over their shoulders in order to touch the guard. "That's your husband, that is! Man who's lost his head. Man they all love. Fancy living with it for fifty years! Oh, Lor! A whole lifetime. Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days in the year, too. All day, every day! Makes you start thinking!" And she watched Gaga speeding exultantly towards her.

"All right. We've got a first," he panted, quite out of breath. "To ourselves. I've tipped the guard. It's ... it's all right. Come along. This way. Come along!"

"Oo!" cried Sally, with archness. "To ourselves! What a surprise! Strange!" And to herself, returning to her own sober thoughts: "If you did too much thinking you'd lose the use of your legs. And if girls thought a bit before they got marrying, they'd.... Funny! I wonder what they would do!"

ii

What she would herself have done Sally had no time to consider; for they were hurried to their compartment and were locked in by the obliging and amused guard. They then sat demurely upon opposite sides of the carriage until the train began to move. Every time anybody peered in at the window Sally, who had recovered her good spirits, began to laugh; and Gaga was full of consternation. But at last even that anxiety was removed, and in the afternoon sunlight the country began to glow under their eyes and race round in a sweeping circle with an intoxicating effect not to be appreciated by those who are staled for railway travelling. Sally allowed Gaga to embrace her; but she kept her face resolutely turned from him for a long time while she relished her new joy in rushing thus through the increasingly-beautiful districts which bordered the track. It was only when Gaga became expostulatory that she abandoned this pleasure and yielded to his tumultuous affection, with a listlessness and a sense of criticism which was new to her. Silly fool; why couldn't he sit still and be quiet! She belonged to herself, not to him. Almost, she thrust him away from her.

They reached Penterby by four o'clock in the afternoon, and were turned out upon the platform with their two light bags, like the stranded wanderers they were. And then they walked out into the roughly paved road leading through the town to higher land behind, and onward, along a road to which they turned their backs, and which wavered, past the railroad station, up an incline in the direction of the distant sea. Gaga carried both bags, and led the way, and Sally saw for the first time a wide street, and shops and houses quaintly built, and a church spire with houses below it, arranged in terraces, all warm in the dying sun. It was still summer here, she thought, and the atmosphere was pleasant. The houses were not at all crowded, but stood up at the first glance as if they were proud of great age and their height above the road from the station.

"We going up there?" demanded Sally, pointing to the hill, and the houses erect upon it.

"No, darling.... See ... that ... that ... lamp."

Sally looked up at Gaga's face. Oh, if it had only been Toby! The blood suddenly rushed to her cheeks. Toby! She wanted Toby! As quickly, she was chilled by fear. What would Toby do? What would he try to do? Yes, well Toby didn't know yet that she was married. And she was married to Gaga, and she had done this thing with her eyes open. There was no going back. Marriage was a thing you could not repudiate. It was final. The blood flowed away from Sally's face. She was cool again in an instant. Her eyes were fixed upon the lamp which Gaga had indicated, and upon the ivy behind it. Upon a suspended board she read in gold the letters "RIVER HOTEL", and as she appreciated the meaning of this name Sally observed that the street went onward past the hotel over an unmistakable bridge.

"Is that the river?" she asked. "Is the hotel on the river? Where we stay?"

"Yes. You'll see.... You'll like it." Gaga was entreating, now rather frightened by Sally's lack of response to his feverish endearments, already inclined to suspicion and sidelong glances of doubt.

"Sure I shall!" cried Sally, perfectly composed once more. "It's nice. Does the river go just there?"

Gaga became suddenly very enthusiastic. He motioned with the hand in which both small bags were carried. He began to walk at a quicker pace.

"You see the front of the hotel—all ... all ivy. Well at the end the wall goes ... goes right down into the water. And there's a balcony ... all ... all covered with glass, on the first floor. Our room opens on this balcony. You can look right down into the river.

"Is it a nice river?"

He was rather hesitating in face of her sharp tone of inquiry.

"Well, er.... Nice? It's ... it's a tidal river. It flows up and down. In ... in the summer things get carried.... I mean, it's not ... not very clean. It's mud."

"Oo." Sally's little nose wrinkled. "Does it smell? I mean, is it healthy?" But at this new question Gaga looked very perplexed and rather unhappy, so that she quickly abandoned her curiosity about the river, knowing that she would presently be able to satisfy it more effectively by personal observation. Without further speech they came abreast of the hotel, and turned in under the arched entrance. To the left of them was a door with the legend "COFFEE ROOM"; to the right another door above which hung a little sign "HOTEL." It was by this right-hand door that they entered, and it was here, by a glass enclosed bar, that they waited. Upon an extended shelf there was lying a newspaper which had come through the post for some departed visitor. Beyond the bar Sally noticed decanters and bottles and upturned glasses. Before her was another door, open, which revealed a table upon which glasses had left little circular stains. She was all curiosity. This must be the saloon. She gave a sharp mischievous hunching of the shoulders, and hugged Gaga's arm. Then, as a stout woman came out of another room, she grew sedate, and stood free from her husband in case they should be supposed to be upon their honeymoon.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Merrick."

She knew him, then. He was no stranger here.

"Mrs. Tennant.... How ... how d'you do? This.... I've brought my wife with me this time," stammered Gaga proudly. "Sally, this is Mrs. Tennant."

"Pleased to meet you," announced the stout woman. Sally scrutinised her. She had been pretty, but had grown fat. She had puffs round her eyes, and swollen lips, and a cat-like expression of geniality. Behind her agreeable smile there was suspicion of all mankind, suspicion and wariness, due to her constant need of self-control in the difficult business of managing noisy or cantankerous guests. Sally did not like her. "Tabby!" she thought at once. But immediately afterwards she knew that it would be worth while to make a friend of Mrs. Tennant. She gave her little friendly grin, and saw its effect. "That's that," reflected Sally. And it was so. Mrs. Tennant cordially led the way up to the first floor, talking of the weather, and of the number of visitors who were at present staying at the River Hotel.

"Does Mrs. Merrick play?" she asked. "Do you? We've got a very good piano in the drawing-room.... I'm passionately fond of music myself. It's the sorrow of my life I can't play."

Sally grimaced. The drawing-room was glimpsed—a room with settees and big chairs and a strident carpet and antimacassars and small palms in pots. Large windows made it beautifully light. And as she took in these details Sally hurried on, and found herself in a narrow dun-coloured passage, where brown doors with numbers upon them indicated the bedrooms. It was into the second of these rooms that she was led, and in spite of the frowst she looked with eagerness at a further door and windows that opened upon the balcony of which Gaga had spoken. The windows were lace-curtained, but she could see through the curtains to what seemed like a conservatory.

"You see the door opens on to the balcony," explained Mrs. Tennant, while Gaga put down the bags and wiped his hands with his handkerchief. "Looks right across the river. I'm afraid the tide's out now; but when it's up you see all sorts of things floating up and down."

"What sort of things?" demanded Sally, going to the glass sides of the building and peering down at the mud.

"Oh, all sorts...." Mrs. Tennant was a little confused, but conversational. "That old building you see across there is ... well, it used to be a granary; but nobody's used it for a long time. There's a dinghy in the mud over there. It's Mr. Scuffle's...."

Dinghy! Instantly Sally's mind jerked back to a day she had spent with Toby, when he had teased her about her ignorance of boats. Toby! So that was a dinghy! Just like any other boat.

The balcony was empty; but trays still lay upon two of the light iron tables, and a newspaper had been tossed upon the matted floor. All the chairs were of wicker, and in them lay little hard cushions covered with dirtied cretonne. Through the long glass side one could see the slowly-flowing river (for the tide was about to turn), and the already dimming sky, and the houses upon the rising ground that lay beyond the farther bank, and the bridge upon which people were walking. Sally looked up and down the momentarily sinister river. She was afraid of water, afraid of its secrecy and its current; and she turned away from her contemplation with a sense of chill.

"I'm cold," she said, brightly. "Bertram.... Could we have some tea, Mrs. Tennant?"

"Certainly. You'd like a wash? I'll get the tea at once...."

Back in the room, Sally was immediately again embraced. She did not now trouble about Gaga; she was glad of his arms around her, and his breast upon which she could lay her head. Married ... river ... married ... river ... ran her thoughts. And she turned away from Gaga to the washstand, and poured cold water from the ewer into the basin.

"Let me alone...." she laughingly said. "Be ... get away.... I'm going to wash."

And when the water touched her face Sally was alert once more, cleansed and freshened. With tea before her she could face even marriage and that drearily-flowing river and the hideous mud, so thick and so oozily sinister.

iii

On the following day Sally, dogged everywhere by Gaga, was perfectly aware of her contempt for him. Twenty-four hours had been enough to show her the exacting and irritating characteristics of her new husband. Did she stir, he looked up; his hand was ever ready for her hand; those chocolate eyes were eternally suffused with a love that moved Sally to impatience. He did not even amuse her by his calf-like pursuit. All that was ruthless in her rose up and sneered at his weakness and his timid assurance, which had the same effect as one of those horrible streamers of cobweb that catch the face as one walks unwarily along a dusky lane. Only her native resoluteness enabled her to show Gaga a false patience. Only her insensitiveness made his constant caress endurable. Sally blinked sometimes at his grabbing sentimentality; but she already began to slip neatly aside and avoid his carefully-planned contacts. She was not yet hard or perverse.

And while Gaga lay down in the afternoon, as she found he was in the habit of doing, in order that his physical strength might last through the day, Sally found the empty drawing-room and with often-strained ears began the difficult task which she had set herself. Below her was the thick, powerful current of the now sinking river, laden with refuse which flowed backwards and forwards past the hotel; and upon the windows and casual brightnesses of the tall houses on the hill across the river she could see the crystal sparkling of reflected sunshine. She had a feeling that all about Penterby was open green country, sometimes flat, but always in the distance crowned and adorned with hills; and she knew the brown of the river and the mud, and the green slime which decorated the wall opposite. It was unforgettable. She would always think of it. And her task was the writing of a letter to Toby. She had planned to write to him upon this day—the first free day of her married life; and she was bent upon keeping to her plan. He must be told at once, and yet as she held the pen above a sheet of plain paper she was stunned by the extraordinary difficulty of the composition. Only then, for the first time, did she grasp the definiteness of the step she had taken. She would never see Toby again. Never? Never—never—never. Sally's eyes filled with tears. A thick, painful sob forced its way through her. Never.

She began to write. She put no address, but only, in her plain handwriting, still that of a schoolgirl, the words "My dear." It was at this point that Sally began to discard all the phrases which she had earlier composed in her head. She considered that if she were never to see Toby again it did not matter what he thought of her. The bald announcement would do very well. It was best, and easiest, and safest. And then she knew again that she was afraid of Toby, and of what he might do. She was a true woman in being unable to face a conclusion. She could not imagine that she would never see him again. It was incredible. So incapable was she of realising the fact of a complete break that she thought herself possessed by an instinct that they must meet and continue as before. Sally was much more afraid that he would kill her. It was the reason why she was putting no address at the head of the letter. He must not find her with Gaga. She wrote at last.

"My dear. I have been a bad wicked girl and married another man. Do not try to find me. I shall be all right. Find some other girl, and be happy with her. I shall never be happy without you. My husband is very kind and good. Don't forget me."

At the end of this letter she put no signature, but a single cross to indicate a kiss. Then she addressed an envelope, stamped it, slipped down the stairs and along to the post office. By the time Toby got the letter she and Gaga would no longer be there; and he would not be able to find her afterwards. London was so big. She was afraid of him, and yet she longed to see him again. Five minutes later she was back in the drawing-room, seated at the piano, and singing softly in her clear voice the song that had first so greatly charmed Gaga.

As she sang, Sally looked up and at the doorway. There, adoringly, stood Gaga, all his love making a radiance in his face which she had not previously seen so distinctly. He came slowly towards her, and as she continued her song he kissed the back of her neck where the hair was brushed up in the first soft incalculable wave. Sally for the first time shrank a little; but she pursued her song unhesitatingly, so schooled was she in her determination that the price she was paying was to be borne.

"We'll go ... go walking in the moonlight to-night ... shall we?" whispered Gaga. Sally nodded, making her voice quaver by the motion. Gaga could not see her face; but Sally knew that even if he had done so he would have been quite unable to read her thoughts, which were dry and inflexible. He remained by her side until she had finished the song, and then fiercely pressed her head back until he was able by stooping to kiss her lips from above. His hand was under her chin. He kissed her many times, oppressively—little ravenous pecks that were febrile rather than loving; and assertive of his new proprietorship. His kisses left Sally unmoved and slightly frowning. She was surprised at Gaga's simplicity in imagining that any girl valued or could possibly value such ceaseless demonstrative action, such ugly hard little parrot-like caresses.

"Only a soppy kid would," she thought. "She'd like it, I suppose. Think quantity meant love. It doesn't. Like a beak. Silly fool!" And aloud she said quite firmly: "There, that's enough. Shan't have any face left, at this rate. I shall come out in spots. What's the time?"

To soften her words she held and pressed his hand; but only for an instant. Then she rose abruptly from the piano and walked over to the window. With his arm immediately at her waist Gaga followed, like a long, abject greyhound.

"The tide's out," he said, indicating the sun illumined mud by the opposite wall.

"Ugh!" shuddered Sally. "Fancy getting your feet in that stuff! You'd never get out.... Gives me the horrors, it does!" She leaned back into his arms.

iv

They left Penterby by a very early train on the Monday morning, and while Gaga took the two bags to an hotel where the Merricks were to stay for the present Sally went direct to Madame Gala's. She had obtained special permission to be an hour late in the morning, and so she entered the workroom without confusion. It was the same as it had always been—the long benches, and the girls, and Miss Summers sitting apart, as plump and feline as ever. There was, of course, curiosity about Sally. Few of the girls supposed that she had been away with a girl friend, which had been the story; and all looked at her with a knowing suspicion. Only Miss Summers was completely trusting. Sally had slipped off her wedding-ring, and it lay in her purse. She took in the whole scene as she entered, and measured the assumptions of the girls with cool indifference. But she would have done that in any case; for Sally had nothing to learn about workgirls and their thoughts and interpretations, and she had also none of the false self-consciousness which makes wrong-doers imagine that their actions have been providentially revealed to all observers. Had she and Gaga arrived together the case would have been different; but nothing had occurred to make the girls suppose that there was any relation between them, and Sally was perfectly safe from that most dangerous of all recognitions. She was still, to the girls, Sally Minto; and to some of them still the white-faced cocket of Rose Anstey's jealous outburst. Sally looked boldly at Rose as she sat industriously working. Then, with greater stealth, at Miss Summers. That plump face had a solemnly preoccupied expression that gave Sally a faint start of doubt. Immediately, however, she knew that Miss Summers must be worried, not upon Sally's account, but on account of some message respecting Madam which had been received earlier in the morning. This made her seize an excuse to approach Miss Summers.

"How's Madam?" she whispered, surreptitiously.

Miss Summers shook her head with foreboding.

"Still the same. No better; no worse. Sally, I'm afraid."

Sally looked down at Miss Summers. How strangely their relation had been altered by this weekend's doings! Wherever Sally glanced she knew that what she saw was now potentially her own. By the simple act of marrying Gaga she had become, as it were, mistress of the place. And she knew it. She knew it plainly and without swollen conceitedness. Not yet was her power unquestionable; but it was none the less genuine. Even Miss Summers....

"I hope she gets better," said Sally.

Miss Summers shot a quick glance upwards. She started, and a faint redness came into her plump cheeks. The tip of her nose was irritated, and she rubbed it with her knuckle.

"Oh, I do hope so," breathed Miss Summers. "It would be awful—awful for all of us—if she didn't. You see...."

"She'll have to die some time," remarked Sally.

"But now!" The head was shaken afresh. Miss Summers gave a heavy sigh. She had no such youthful confidence as Sally's. She was a born follower, a born sheep; and with Madam removed she could see nothing ahead but disaster to the business. Sally had a little difficulty in keeping back her smile. She thought of this poor old pussycat in fear of her life, and her lip slightly curled at the knowledge that she alone had superior knowledge of the situation. Already Sally was casting round for channels in which her new power might be used. She wanted opportunity. It was both a chagrin and a secret relief to her that Madam could not yet be told of the marriage. If she knew it, and disapproved, as Sally knew that she must do, Madam could at any moment annul Sally's hopes of taking a leading part in the business. She could alter her will. Therefore, if she lived, she must be kept ignorant. It would be a trouble. And yet in spite of her assurance Sally was still suspicious of her own ability to master every detail in time to carry on the whole establishment without a great lapse into momentary failure. She planned as a middle-aged woman. At eighteen her plans were profound. But instinctively, and in spite of colossal conceit, she understood that eighteen was not an age at which control can successfully be taken of a large business. Therefore she was fighting against unacknowledged fear.

During that day she hardly saw Gaga at all. He was at home with his mother, and did not come to business until the afternoon. Only in the evening did she creep into his room and submit to his endearments. She then left, and went to the hotel at which for the present they were to stay; and here, in the little sitting-room attached to their bedroom, she was for the first time able to be alone for half-an-hour with her post-nuptial reflections. They were not all pleasant, and they called for the exercise of her natural resoluteness. She had comfort, and the knowledge that she need never again trouble about food and clothing. But she also knew that a husband is a different sort of person from a lover. He seemed to her to be a sort of omnipresent nuisance. Her trouble was that thoughts and ambitions were in conflict with Gaga's amorousness. He could never understand her. He could understand her no better than Toby, and as she had no use for him otherwise than as the instrument of her ambition, she was already, within two days of marriage, bored with him. Sally awaited Gaga's arrival with calm unwillingness. She did not realise how rapid would be her instinctive progress to repugnance; but she had no illusions about her marriage.

At last Gaga arrived, his own eagerness unabated, but he was still shaken by the fact that his mother was seriously ill. With Sally in his arms he whispered or murmured alternately professions of love and anxiety. She was all the time secretly astonished at his devotion to Madam, because it corresponded to nothing in her own nature; but she comforted Gaga because it was her impulse to do so. She did not dislike him in this mood. She felt pity for him. It was only for his tremulous persistency in caress that Sally felt contempt. Gradually she began to be able to divert his mind to other matters—to their own future, and the flat they were to take and to furnish; and to the plans they must make for a slow change of her position in the business. Already Sally was obtaining a grasp of the details, but she could go little further until her access to the books and accounts was free. She could do nothing until some scheme had been made. So the two sat together after dinner and discussed what they were to do, and where they were to live, and how the rooms of the flat were to be furnished. It was all, upon Sally's side, practical and clear; and for Gaga a wonderful revelation of Sally's wisdom. He became more and more infatuated, as Sally became more and more cool. And they talked the whole evening through, without realising that with each moment Sally's dominion was more firmly established.

It was only towards the end of the evening that Gaga, unhinged by excitement, became desperately pale, and confessed to a headache. He found his customary drugs, and took them. But to Sally this headache was a new and emphatic indication of Gaga's troublesome temperament. Ugliness and squalor she knew; but sickliness was new to her. In face of a groaning and prostrate man, she turned away. Her heart sank a little. Then, with a shrug, she turned to the advertisements of flats to let in London which she found in various newspapers; and made notes of the addresses of house agents. This occupation she continued until Gaga called almost fretfully from the next room, when she turned off the electric light and joined him. An hour later, while Gaga still lay staring into the darkness, Sally was fast asleep. She had no dreams. For the present she was occupied with facts alone; and she did not suspect that she was unhappy, because she had been absorbing too many details to be able to reflect upon the sinking of her heart and its meaning.

v

The next evening Sally went to see her mother. Her first object was to get Mrs. Minto away from the room in which they had lived; because it was essential that if Toby came back, as she believed he could not do for some days, he should be unable to trace Sally or her mother. It was for fear of Toby that the removal was to be made. Once get Mrs. Minto away, to some other part of North London, and Toby might seek news of Sally in vain. Only if he came and waited outside Madam's would he be able to find her; and in that case she could still baulk him, as she was going to stay late every evening for the future in order to work with Gaga. But first of all, Sally must arrange to get her mother out of the old house. She would not want to go. She must go. She would pretend that she could keep herself. She would show the stubborn pride of many old people of the working class, who will work until they kill themselves rather than accept charitable doles. Very well, Sally knew that Mrs. Minto could not keep herself; and she knew also that these same old people have no similar delicacy in taking from their children's earnings. She was going to explain that she was still working, and that what Mrs. Minto would receive came from Sally herself, and not from Sally's husband. And she would herself find a room for her mother in Stoke Newington, a suburb which is farther from Holloway than many more distant places for the reason that no dweller in Holloway has any curiosity about Stoke Newington or any impulse to go there as an adventure.

Sally found Mrs. Minto in a familiar attitude, stooping over a very small fire; but as she ran up the stairs very softly, with a nervous dread of Toby, she had no conception of the welcome which awaited her. She opened the door and went into the dingy room, and stood smiling; and to her great surprise she saw her mother rise almost wildly and come towards her. Two thin arms pressed and fondled her, and a thin old cheek was pressed hard against her own. To herself Mrs. Minto was ejaculating in a shivering way: "My baby, my baby!" Only then did Sally understand how much the separation had meant to her mother. She herself had never once thought of that lonely figure at home.

"Poor old thing!" Sally found herself saying. "Was she lonely then?" She patted her mother's bony shoulders, and hugged her, affected by this involuntary betrayal of love. Mrs. Minto had never been demonstrative. "I wish I'd brought you something, now. A present. I never thought of it."

"Is it all right? Are you happy, my dearie?" demanded Mrs. Minto, with a searching glance.

"I knew what I was doing, ma," proclaimed Sally. "There's not much I don't know."

It was an evasion; a confession of something quite other than the happiness about which she had been asked.

"Ah, that's what I was afraid of...." breathed her mother. "That's what young people always think. You don't know nothing at all, Sally."

"I know more'n you do!" It was a defiance.

"You think you do. Why, you're only a baby...." Mrs. Minto shook her head several times, with lugubrious effect. But her last words had been full of a smothered affection, more truly precious than a hundred of Gaga's kisses or a dozen of Toby's animal hugs.

"In your days I should have been." Sally withdrew herself, and led her mother back to her chair. "Not know! Why, the girls know a lot more now than they used to when you was a girl. No more timid little creatures."

"They only think they know more," declared Mrs. Minto, trembling. "And it takes 'em longer to find out they don't know nothing at all. It takes a lot of time to get to know. You're in too much of a hurry, my gel. You don't know nothing. Nothing whatever, for all your talk of it. I been thinking about it all these days—frantic, I've been."

"All these years!" jeered Sally. "Look here, ma.... Here's my marriage license!" And as she spoke she waved the folded paper before her mother's eyes in such a way that it fell open and showed the official entries. Even as she did this so lightly, Sally was able to catch the sharply hidden expression of relief which crossed Mrs. Minto's face at the reassurance. She made no pretence of misunderstanding. "Say I don't know anything?" she demanded. "Think I don't know enough for that? Silly old fool? What did I tell you? There's about twenty million things I know that you don't know. And never will know, what's more. Wake up! I tell you one thing, ma. The people who don't know think a lot worse than the people who do. They fancy more. See? It's a little way they got. All goes on inside their heads, and shakes about. People like me haven't got time to think a lot of muck. We do things ... and do them thorough."

Mrs. Minto, reproved, sank into contemplation.

"Well, I don't know, Sally," she went on, after a pause. "You talk a lot. I'd rather think than talk. You say he's rich. Sometimes girls get left."

"Not me, though," Sally assured her. "Soppy ones do. I'm not soppy. And I'll tell you what. I'm going to get you out of this place."

"I ain't going to live with you and him!" declared Mrs. Minto in alarm. "I wouldn't!"

"No. You're going to live somewhere else. I want you to get away from here. You're going to have two decent rooms ... in Stoke Newington. Real paper on the walls, and a carpet, and new mattress that isn't like two horse troughs."

"I won't take nothing from him."

"No. From me. Out of my wages."

"You ain't going to have.... Don't be silly. I'm well off where I am."

"I'm going to keep on at Madam's. I'm going to have plenty money. And you're going to move. Got it? I'll see about it to-morrow night, get you in Thursday or Friday. Won't take an hour to settle you in. Then you'll be comfortable."

"I'm very well as I am," said Mrs. Minto, obstinately. "I can keep myself. I'm not going to sponge on you. Not likely."

"You'll move Thursday or Friday, I tell you."

It was final. The poor thin little old woman had no fight in her. She looked up at Sally, and her face was the anxious face of a monkey, or of a sick beast that is being tended. Now that she had been comforted about Sally she had nothing left to say. She made a last feeble effort.

"I don't want to move. Mrs. Roberson...."

"Fiddlesticks!"

"My 'ead!"

"Your head'll get better if you keep quiet and have real coal and a bath or two." Sally was imperious, and enjoyingly so. Her spirits had risen. She was a general. She looked down protectingly at her mother, and a ghost of ancient love rose breathing in her heart. "Silly old thing!" she murmured, with a touch of softness; and knelt suddenly. "Got to look after you a bit," she added. "It's you who's the baby now. What a lot of kids people are! Makes me feel a hundred—and over—when I see what fools they are. I'm sorry for you, and that's the truth. You and Miss Summers and Gaga."

"Who's Gaga?"

"He's Mr. Sally Minto," said Sally with mystic insolence. "That's who Gaga is. He calls himself my husband, but he's no more my husband than you are, ma. And never will be. But oh, Lor! He's going to be the worry of my life! Ma, did Pa chase you all over the place when you was married? I mean, chase you all about trying to kiss you and fuss you?"

"No, dear," said Mrs. Minto. "He was drunk. He didn't know what he was doing."

"Hn," Sally grunted. Then she stood up again. "I'm going now," she announced. "I'm going back to Gaga. He's ill. I expect he's being sick."

And before her mother could make startled enquiries, Sally had kissed her and gone to the door. She ran in high spirits down the stairs and out of the front door not laughing, but in a curious way moved by this conversation and the strange turn which it had taken. She slammed the door after her, and met with a sudden squall of wind. And as she went away from the house she was conscious of a feeling of relief. She had escaped from it, and her heart was beating rather fast. All the time, under her speech and her thoughts, she had unconsciously been listening for Toby's step upon the stair. Even now, she knew that her shoulders were contracted with apprehensiveness.

She hurried along in the direction of Holloway Road, still flinching, with her nerves uncommonly strained. It was such an odd feeling that she had in thus revisiting her ugly old home. She had noticed it all afresh—the tired linoleum, and the oil stove and the tiny fire made from coal blocks, and the stupid old bed and the browned wallpaper—and she felt that it all belonged to a time when she had been a different girl altogether. She had never before been away from home, without her mother, for so long. She had never once been away from this room for a night, until her marriage. And to come thus into the dark street, in a wind, with the door slamming behind her, took Sally's memories uncontrollably back to the days which followed their first arrival, the days when she had met Toby and talked to him and walked with him about the streets. She recalled her visit to Mrs. Perce, and the sight of that grim figure relentlessly waiting for her outside the Stores; and the struggle with Toby, and her resultant happiness; and the night when he had first come to the room while her mother lay in the hospital. Heigho! She had been young in those days; now she felt an old woman, with all the sense of ageless age which the young feel after a transition from one kind of life to another. She was in a sense disillusioned. She had taken her step, and cut the link that bound her to this neighbourhood and the starveling room. She had cut the link that bound her to Toby. And he was now swiftly back in her consciousness, in her heart; so that she knew she would never forget him because he was the first man she had loved, and thus forever her idea of a lover. So strong was her emotion that she felt a strange little dryness in her throat and her burning eyes, and fancied she heard his voice. It was as though two years had been taken away, as though she once again—as she done two years ago—longed and feared to meet Toby.

As Sally, with her head bent and her thoughts active, pressed onward, she heard the clanging bell of a passing tramcar, and saw its brilliant lights rush by along the Holloway Road. A cart rattled on the rough stones of the road, and the wind blew the leaves of the bushes in the gardens she passed. And as she shivered a little at the wind's onset she again imagined that she heard Toby's voice, and inevitably turned in the direction from which the sound had appeared to reach her. Everything was quite dark; but there was a blackness just behind her that was like the figure of a man. It took shape; it came nearer and nearer. Sally's heart stopped beating, and she shrank back against the railing of one of the houses. She felt a deadly sickness upon her, a dreadful horror.

"Sally!"

It was Toby. He was abreast, inescapable. He loomed over her like a figure of vengeance. Her heart was like water. She was hysterically afraid.

vi

"Hallo, Sally!" Toby was by her side, and his arms round her, and his kisses on her cheek. "Why, aren't you going to kiss me?"

Sally's eyes opened wide at his tone of innocent surprise. She suffered him to kiss her lips. Toby had not received her letter! He was on leave, and.... She gasped. An indescribable relief caused her to rest limply and unprotestingly in his arms. Once again they were engulfed in merciful darkness, hidden from each other and from anybody who might happen to pass. She could not think at all; but she was thankful at this reprieve. Not yet would he kill her. And as they stood embraced she was suddenly happy, with a passion that astonished her. Toby— Toby, her love; and she herself in his arms again, as she had never thought to be. A strange laugh, low and tender, came from her lips. Her cheek was gently rubbed against his, and her body quite relaxed. Every one of Sally's difficulties suffered an oblivion; they were all dispersed in the extraordinary mist of sensation which enwrapped her.

"I was surprised," she murmured, kissing him with all her heart. "Didn't expect to see you. Funny to see you ... so funny ... and when I was thinking of you. I must have known you were coming."

"I just got in," Toby said. "I say, where you going, Sal?"

Sally flinched again. Immediately she was conscious of terror.

"Stoke Newington," she cried; in a flash. What was she to do? What was she to do? She was desperate. Fear was strong; but love was stronger. It was not only now that she did not dare to tell him the truth in case he killed her; much more than that was her understanding of the fact that she could not bear to lose him. Such gust of thankfulness had shaken Sally when she knew that Toby had not received her letter that she was brimming now with joy. It was impossible to lose her rapture at the moment of its full glory. She could not tell him.

"Stoke Newington? Whatever for? Here, wait till I've had some grub.... No, I'll come with you now. Get some grub later. Have you got to go there now?"

"You musn't come, Toby."

"Why not?" He was instantly suspicious. His grip tightened, and he forced her to look at him.

"Didn't you get my letter?"

"When? Now? I've had no letter. What you going to Stoke Newington for? No, I want to know. You going to meet another chap? I believe you are, you little devil! By Christ! If you.... I will come!" Toby was now fiercely suspicious. She could tell from his ferocious grip, and the urgency of his tone. "If you're playing that game, I'll kill you. By Christ, I will!"

"I'm not. I'm not," cried Sally. "You're hurting me, Toby!"

"You swear it?" He relaxed his hold, which was strangling her. In the darkness he again strove to see her expression and judge for himself of her honesty.

"I'm not going to see anybody. I swear I'm not."

"Why did you ask if I'd had your letter? What you bin writing to me?"

"Oo, a lot of lies...." breathed Sally. "Silly talk and rubbish. That's all it was."

"What about?" He was still intense. Sally could hardly breathe, and her courage was fading. They were so much in the darkness that they could not be seen, and she was entirely dominated by Toby's physical strength. Within his grasp she was helpless, and not all her dartingly-imagined expedients would be enough to secure her escape. Hastily she improvised a story.

"Well, I'm not living with ma any longer. I gone out to live in," she lied.

"Stoke Newington?"

"No."

"Lost your job?"

"No."

He was baffled! but he knew that something was amiss. Sally could feel him drawing deep breaths. In the shadow she could imagine that his jaw was firmly set. It was strange to feel so happy in his arms, so afraid of death, so frustrated in the composition of any tale by which she could free herself and thus gain time to make some fresh plan. Sally had never been in a comparable quandary.

"Where you living?" he next demanded.

"Don't be rough. You're hurting. Well, I'm living. I forget the address. Only went there last night. I'm with a friend."

"What sort of a friend? A girl? What's her name?"

"Miss Summers."

Toby considered. He had heard that name, Sally knew, and must remember it. She felt that at last she had stumbled upon something which would seem to him probable enough to allay immediate suspicion.

"She's your forewoman or something, isn't she?" he demanded.

"Yes. She's very kind. She's ever so nice." Sally prayed that he might believe her. There was a long pause of doubt, during which hysteria, rising, nearly provoked a frantic struggle for freedom and flight. But she remembered a former occasion, and her knees were weak at the foreknowledge of failure. He would not be merciful. She feared him and adored him.

"Well," Toby said at last, in a grumble; "when do I see you? Eh?" Thank God, his voice had changed. He had spoken slowly and in acceptance of the tale. Sally conquered a sob that would have betrayed her. Toby had been tricked. There was still a chance that she might be able to manage him for the present.

Sally thought for a moment, but in a distracted blur. All her plans, made upon the assumption that he would be at sea for at least a week longer, had miscarried. There was now no sense in moving her mother hurriedly and secretly. Toby, in the room above, would be aware of everything. She must arrange this differently. It would need a careful scheme. When would Toby receive his letter? Probably it would not be forwarded at all, but would be kept at the offices of the shipping company. That was what had happened once or twice before. He would be at home a week. She had a week. How tired she was! She must get away now, and have a chance to think; but she must see Toby again. She must.

"To-morrow," Sally gasped. "To-morrow night. Eight o'clock. Marble Arch. Eight o'clock, or a bit after. I might be kept a little late."

To her inexpressable thankfulness, Toby rather grumblingly agreed.

"We'll go to the pictures," he said. "There's a picture house there."

"Wherever you like. Toby, I must go."

They kissed long and passionately; and when Sally was alone, sitting in the tramcar on its way to Holborn, she found that she was trembling from head to foot. She was in consternation, and prevented from crying only by the steadily inquisitive stare of a stout woman opposite. Sally had never been so afraid, so distraught. She had never been in such a bewildering and terrifying difficulty. She was only half conscious.

vii

And when she reached the hotel their sitting-room was in darkness. Gaga had evidently been home, for the evening paper had been thrown upon the floor, and his hat and coat were upon one of the chairs. Sally remembered what she had told her mother, and went quickly to the bedroom door. It was true. Gaga lay groaning in bed, and there was a faint smell of sickness in the air. Sally instinctively recoiled, and went back into the sitting-room. Her hands came together and jerked in a gesture of despair. Everything was against her. The white face was whiter; the mischievous eyes were sombre. She was a lonely and frightened child without any support in her life. She was too young, in spite of her vivacity, to endure such trials unbroken; and in this situation she was overwhelmed.

With her hands to her mouth, Sally stumbled to the hearthrug, and bowed her head against the arm of a chair. Painful sobs shook her body.

"Oh, I wish I was dead! I wish I was dead!" she wailed.

In that moment of lost hope she was faced only with the impossibility of dealing with all her trials. She had been over-excited, and she was desperate. Everything had gone wrong. She was thus early face to face with the consequences of her own blithe and over-confident actions; and the consequences threatened disaster. Death would really at this moment have seemed better than the effort she must make to grapple with her problems. It would have been so much easier, and she was without courage. Afraid lest her sobs might arouse Gaga and bring him groaning to her side, she stifled them. But they made her body heave for a long time, until at last with tear-filled eyes she stared at the fire, and knew that the fit was over.

What was Sally to do? There was the fatal letter already waiting somewhere for Toby, or on its way to him. The thought of it made her body feel as though it were covered with prickles. She could not keep still, but started to her feet and took several paces, her hand to her cheek, as she remained deep in disturbed thought. If she saw Toby the next night, and was again afraid to tell him of her marriage, what would become of her? Sooner or later he was bound to know. The letter would tell him. Oh, if only she had not written that letter! She would have had time, and time was what she needed—time to remove her mother, to cover her own tracks. And yet she knew now that she could not give Toby up. And yet to give up her ambitions was now a proposition equally impossible. She could not. She would not. She wanted everything. She wanted Toby; but she wanted her opportunity with the business. If Toby would only ... what? She could not bear the idea of his marrying another girl. She wanted him for herself. But if he would only accept the situation—for the present. If he would keep quiet. He would not. She could not control him, because he was another human being, with desires and impulses as insistent as her own.

Her mind came round to another position. If she had not married Gaga—if she had kept on playing with him, tantalising him, until she had been indispensable! No; that was impossible. Wretched creature though she felt him at this moment to be, Gaga also was a human being. Sally was in conflict with the world, because the world opposes to the wilfulness of the individual a steady pressure that is without mercy because it is without considerateness. Nothing is more selfish than the individual, except the mass of individuals, which has greater power. Again, in her torment, Sally longed for death. Then, quickly tangential, she returned to Toby and their coming meeting. If she did not tell him, but let him find her letter—she would have lost him. He would be savagely angry. He would infallibly kill her, because she would have deserved his vengeful hatred.

A moan reached Sally's ears. Her name was called. Gaga must have seen from his bed the light in the next room. She hesitated, repugnance and cruelty struggling in her mind with the knowledge that she must submit to her burden. Then she again turned to the bedroom, fighting down her distaste, her horror of sickness and illness, of invalidism, of Gaga in particular. She saw his grey face all pointed and sunken in the electric light, and took in the general bareness of the bedroom, with its plain iron bedstead and cream coloured crockery and worn carpet and walls of a cold pale blue.

"Sally," groaned Gaga. "I've been waiting for you."

"You ill?" she asked, perfunctorily. "Is your head bad?"

"Dreadful! How long you've been." Gaga's voice was feeble. He spoke with difficulty. His hand was reached out for hers. With an effort Sally took it, and bent and kissed Gaga's temple. He looked ghastly, and his face was moist with perspiration. Had Gaga seen the aversion in Sally's eyes he would have released her in horror; but he was self-engrossed. He had been longing for her, and as Sally sat on the edge of the bed smoothing the hair back from his brow he nestled closer to her, appeased by the contact, and genuinely comforted by her presence. His eyes closed. He made no attempt to speak.

So they remained for several moments. Then Sally tried to move, and he resisted her movement with a clinging protest.

"I'm just going to tidy up a bit," she said. "Then I'm coming to bed."

"I wish you'd get me something.... Some Bovril ... or ... something." Gaga was like a wasted child, not fractious, but fretful and wanting to be petted. Sally shuddered as she took steps to gratify him; and was glad to have some occupation that carried her out of the room and gave her something to do. She was momentarily diverted from thought of Toby; but she had a new desire to be away from the hotel, and in some house or flat which she could control by herself. It would be so much easier. It would....

When she was in bed she was prevented from sleeping by her now recurring difficulties. She was absolutely unable to make a plan for Toby. She was disgusted with Gaga and his sickness. She was afraid and rebellious and exasperated. And as she lay there she felt Gaga moving, and heard his faint groaning, and shook with a frenzy that was a thousand times more than irritation at the tangle in which she was placed. Like all young people, she imperiously demanded a fresh start—to cut all this mess away, and begin again as though nothing at all had happened. She tried to repudiate her own actions. It was no good. She could not cancel them. What she had done was done, and the consequences were inexorable. It was with consequences alone that she had to deal. Stifled screams rose within her. She turned frantically from side to side.

"Sally!" peevishly protested Gaga. "I can't get ... get to sleep if you fidget like that. You're keeping me ... awake. Disturbing me."

"Am I?" cried Sally, with suppressed anger steeling her voice. "I can't get to sleep either. It's deadly!"

"But you're ... fidgetting."

"Oh.... I thought I was lying quite still!" she exclaimed, with irony. A bitter laugh was checked upon her lips.

There was a silence, and Sally tried to sleep. It was of no use. With a deep sigh that was almost a passionate exclamation, she once again gave way to her uncontrollable restlessness.

"Sally!" came the grizzling voice of Gaga.

"What?" she shouted, past all self-restraint.

"You're fidgetting!"

"Well! Who wouldn't? You groaning—groaning—groaning. Enough to make anybody fidget. Why, you're making me sick! Why can't you look after yourself?... What's the use of eating things that make you ill?"

"I didn't," groaned Gaga. "I only want to get to sleep."

"O—oh!" It was a savage, inhuman sound of horror and despair. Sally, unendurably exasperated, slipped out of bed, and put on a skirt and coat. Then she went into the sitting-room, made up the fire, and curled herself up in one of the armchairs. A thin voice followed her.

"Sally!" It was a direct call to hysteria. "Sally.... Sally...."

"Oh, shut up!" cried Sally. "I can't stand it. I can't stand it."

"My dearest...."

She ignored Gaga; but she could not sleep. Although he called no more, she heard him still occasionally making some plaintive sound, while she continued to lie curled in the chair until her limbs were cramped. Long she pondered upon her fate and her situation; and the morning found her still irresolute, filled with distaste for Gaga, and fear of Toby, and a general loathing of the difficulties which she and they had jointly created. She was unhappy in a way that she had never previously known, helplessly indignant, and all the time argumentative and explanatory to herself because she knew that for all that was now threatening her she alone was at heart to blame. But this did not prevent Sally from disliking Gaga as she had not hitherto disliked him; for Gaga was the person whom she had most injured, and the person who now stood in the way of complete liberty. It was as yet only an hysterical exasperation due to her search for some scapegoat; but his sickness and his peevish complaints of her restlessness had added to Sally's feeling an ingredient of distaste which she could not overcome.

viii

In the morning, when they met, Gaga was sulkily distant; and Sally sat opposite to him at their chilly breakfast with a puckered brow and a curled lip. It was not hatred that fired her, but repugnance. If Gaga had made any motion towards an embrace she would wildly have pushed him from her. She could not have borne his touch. She was even thankful that he was so silent. In this estrangement she found momentary relief. And all the time, hammering in her head, was the one thought—Toby, Toby. What was she to do with Toby? As she left Gaga at breakfast she was still on the borders of hysteria. She was suffering so much from the trials of the night that she was hardly in her senses.

The workroom, with its routine and the need for hiding her feelings, gave her more relief. She could at least take some pains to sew accurately, to watch the other girls, and to notice how Miss Summers started at the slightest noise. Miss Summers, Sally knew, was worrying about Madam and Madam's health. By now Gaga would be on his way to his mother's home, equally concerned. Only Sally was indifferent to Madam's health. She had no interest in it. Where she would, but for Toby, have followed every report with curiosity, she was now more than callous. Madam was the least of her dilemmas. Sally's eyes closed; slowly she rocked to and fro, forgetting even the girls, and ignoring her work altogether. Toby. Her heart contracted with fear. Toby.

And yet the day wore on, and she came to no conclusion. Late in the afternoon there came a telephone message. Gaga was on the line, asking for Sally. A thrill went round the workroom. Gaga— Sally! All the girls looked at one another. With a quickly-beating heart Sally went into the telephone box and answered. As if directly in her ear, Gaga spoke; but his voice was so strained that she hardly recognised it. She was still unforgiven. The voice said: "Sally, my ... my mother's very ill. I must stay here. I shan't come to the hotel to-night. You ... you'll be all right."

Like lightning Sally answered: "I'll go home to-night."

The voice said "Wha-at?" and she repeated her reply. Gaga seemed almost pleased. He commended the plan. And Sally hung up the receiver with a sudden flush that made her whole body feel warm. It was a profound relief to her. And in the midst of relief she found another emotion more vehement still. She found passionate joy, and overwhelming temptation, and then again a sharp icy fear. The emotions were all gone in an instant. She was once more self-possessed. She returned to the workroom with an impassive face.

"He didn't say anything about Madam. He wants me to take round a parcel he left here last night," she glibly explained. "He's not coming in to-day at all. I'm to take it round after I leave work."

With immediate care, she went into Madam's room and made up a small parcel containing a cheap novel which Gaga had left there. This she brought to her place and kept before her. Incredulously, the other girls watched and sneered. It was the first inkling they had had of any special relationship between Sally and Gaga. To the minds of all occurred memory of that scene in the country, when Gaga had been entranced by Sally's song. They remembered the unknown girl's joyous yell, "What price Gaga on the love path! Whey!" And they remembered Miss Rapson's word about Sally—"deep." The white-faced cocket! Rose Anstey stared angrily at Sally, who returned the glance with a coolness the more destructive because it arose from indifference. But Sally knew all that was going on around her. Gaga had been a fool to ask for her pointedly; and yet what else, in the circumstances, could he have done?

Her excitement rose as the afternoon progressed; and by the evening she was in a fever. When all the other girls were gathering together their work and their out-of-door clothes she joined the general mÊlÉe with something that approached fierceness. It was not that Sally had any need to hurry, for there were two hours ahead of her; but she was on fire to be gone, to take her little parcel to the hotel, to give the clerk there news of her intended absence for the night, and to make a careful toilette before her appointment. The time was too slow for Sally. She was biting her lips with impatience more than an hour before the time agreed upon for the meeting. Her old longing for Toby had come back with extraordinary strength. As the darkness grew she slipped out of the hotel and into the night-sheltered streets. For long she walked rapidly about London, examining each clock she passed until the vagaries of them all so heightened her passion that she could have shrieked at their fresh discrepancies.

And at last it was nearly eight o'clock, and she walked round and round the Marble Arch in the tortured light of the ballooned lamps, and round the outer side of the wide road thereabouts. There was as yet no sign of Toby. It wanted two or three minutes to the hour. A rush of traffic made Oxford Street roar as if with fury. It was like the sea, but without gradations of sound. Big red motor-omnibuses thundered along, and cabs flew by. There were occasional electric broughams such as she coveted, which tinkled a bell instead of sounding some one of the ugly horns which added their noise to the general racket. And Toby did not come. A panic seized her. Perhaps her letter after all had been forwarded to him? Perhaps he was not coming? Much as she had dreaded his violence, such a failure now impressed her as even more sinister. She had stopped dead in the violence of this sudden thought, and was for the moment blinded and deafened, when Toby gently took her arm. Sally's first jump of horror was followed by such an abandonment to his arms that she was rendered quite unconscious of the place and the notice of those who passed. Only she recognised that Toby was there, that he was not angry, that he was the same strong lover she had always known, ready and determined, her lover among all men.

"Not the pictures. Not the pictures," she pleaded, with tears in her voice. "Come for a walk. Come this way!"

She pulled at Toby's arm, and drew him towards the entrance to Hyde Park. Her arm was hugging his, her body pressed against Toby's. Only when they were out of that circle of light did she feel safe, appeased, able to think with any of her old clearness. She had been a frightened child. Now she was an exultantly happy one, given over to the great joy of the moment.

ix

They were immediately lost in the darkness of the Park, hidden from all, and oblivious of the flashing lamps of vehicles which drove endlessly up the broad road from Piccadilly. And Sally was in Toby's arms, straining him to her, sobbing and uttering little sounds of love and relief.

"Hullo, hullo!" cried Toby, jerking her chin up with a rough hand.

"I thought you'd never come! I thought you wouldn't come!" whispered Sally. "Oh, Toby, I thought you'd never come!" She was hysterical in her joy.

"Course I come!" exclaimed Toby. "Wodjer take me for?"

"Well, I didn't know." Sally was quite unguarded. "Thought you might have...." She checked herself. Her body was shaken with a little thrill of laughter—laughter of silly joy. She hugged him closer. "Been away a long time this time," she said. "Quite a sailor, ain't you?... Did you have rough weather? Ship all sloppy with the waves? And you dancing about to keep your feet?"

"It's always rough weather," gloried Toby. "Sea goin' all the time. But she's a daisy to keep steady. Wouldn't hardly notice you was moving."

"I'm sure!" cried Sally, ironically. "And you and the captain chatting together in the cabin, and all."

"No." Toby was condescending under chaff. "But we're quite.... Skipper, he's called. You don't call him captain. He's just like me. He's no better; only he...."

"Only he knows how to sail a boat," mocked Sally.

"So do I. I sailed her up the river." He was recklessly and untruthfully boastful, as instinct told her.

"I should think so." Sally's voice was so jeering that it laughed his pretensions to nothing at all. "And then you woke up."

Toby became expostulatory. But all the time Sally was not listening. She was not thinking of his words at all; but was only conscious of the warm glow running through her at his nearness and his strong clasp. Every now and then she prompted him to kiss her; and when Toby kissed her she felt as though she did not know what unhappiness was. He was so strong, and his chin so firm and rough; and he had such an air of the salt sea about him, that she was like a baby at the breast. She loved him. No thought of Gaga came. Only the moment's delight absorbed them both.

Presently they began to walk along the dark path, Toby's arm still pressing Sally to his side, and his head every now and then almost savagely down against her hair. The small hat she had worn was taken off, and was carried, swinging. Sally was so small and so comparatively weak beside Toby's burly strength that she was all the time relishing his power entirely to subdue her; and her wits were so quick that she never had a moment's hesitation as to the right way to tease him. She was without any least sensation of unhappiness. She had never been so glad of Toby since their first exulting days of passion, and her whole nature was bubbling and trembling towards him in the old way, as if they had come together again after some long dreadful estrangement.

And then Sally remembered Gaga. She had been laughing so much in herself at this long evening of freedom, that the recollection was like ice to her heart. It was all a mockery, a fantasy; and Toby was no more hers. She was separated from him for ever, and the more closely she was embraced by him the less she felt herself free to belong to him. A revulsion of feeling shook her. With an instinctive movement almost savage, she escaped from his arm and walked onward, her face set and her spirits banished.

"No," she cried, when Toby sought to re-establish his protective hold. She was as if deep in thought; but in fact she was not thinking at all, but was only overwhelmed by the old horror of her situation which had newly arisen after this short respite of dreaming. Toby let her walk alone, and lighted a cigarette, slouching beside her with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He was a dim hunched figure in the gloom. Sally could not see him clearly; her sense of him was simply of his strength and his responsiveness to her own physical inclinations. The sense evoked in her heart longing which made Sally bow her head. She sighed deeply; her fixed eyes were closed. She was quite blind. For an instant she was lost in grave humility. Her smile in the darkness held such sweetness that it gave proof of her true love, her beautiful and entranced adoration.

"What time you got to be back?" Toby abruptly questioned in a matter-of-fact tone. It was like the unexpected tearing of calico, so sharply did such a demand break the vision and show his insensitiveness to her mood.

"Back?" Sally was dazed. She could not understand Toby's speech. "Back where?" She had an extraordinary feeling of shock. Her peace was destroyed.

"To-night."

Sally caught her breath. In a strained tone that sounded, as she meant it to sound, as though she had been merely inattentive, she made answer:

"Oh, I.... I'm going home to-night. Holloway. Stopping with mother."

Toby had looked at his watch before throwing his match away.

"It's ha' parce eight," he mentioned.

A fierceness shook Sally. It was more than she could bear. She turned upon him in a fury. With such a snarling venom did she speak that Toby drew himself almost defensively to his full height.

"Don't let me keep you!" she cried. "I didn't know you were in a hurry. If you want to go home, go. Go!" She ended almost in a scream, and her fists were frantically jerked.

"Here!" Toby was disconcerted. "What you talking about? I only said the time." He seized her, and Sally struggled as of old. But she could not resist him. There was too great a discrepancy in their strength, and in their will, when her own will so dangerously betrayed her. Toby held her closer and closer. His grip was tyrannic. Sally's breath was short, sobbing; her eyes were again closed, and her lips tragically pressed together. Her face might have been marble. And as he held her fast, Toby forced back Sally's head and many times kissed her hotly and possessively. "What's the row?" he demanded. She heard the savagery of his tone, and felt his warm breath on her cheek; and some undertone of his husky voice vibrated in her ear. "Ain't you well, Sal?" he whispered. "I never meant I wanted to go home. I don't. You know that. I only said the time. Only ... how long had we got? Sally, old girl...."

"All right, all right!" Sally did not know what she was saying. Her brows were knitted in distraction. Then: "Oh, any old time...." And as she spoke temptation suddenly swept her with a tingling heat, and her mouth was dry and her body tense with the excitement of the overwhelming moment. Her heart beat so fast that she was quite breathless. With an impulse too strong for resistance she returned her lips to Toby's, half-crying, and in vehement surrender. She could see no further, could endure no more. At the withdrawal she cried gaspingly: "I needn't ... needn't go home at all ... to-night. Nobody ... expects me. Toby!"

x

In the morning Sally awoke with a heavy heart. Foreboding was more gloomy than she had ever known it. The hotel bedroom in which they had slept was very small, and the walls towered above her. It was a dirty room, and the bright sunlight that came through the slats of the blinds revealed the thick London dust in the curtains and on the walls. Toby was by her side, fast asleep. She had no sense of wrong-doing—it never troubled Sally, who judged her own conduct by exceptional standards; but she was again full of fear. Lightly she touched Toby's thick strong hair, and kissed it, half raised from her pillow; and bending over him. Her love was undiminished, but her fear of him was suddenly increased. And as she withdrew her hand and sat upright she caught sight of the wedding-ring which she had taken from her purse and slipped onto her finger before they reached the hotel. They had come without luggage, and it had been an impulse of caution which had led her to wear the ring. Slowly she turned it round and round upon her finger, not recalling that it was Gaga's ring, not considering her use of it an added dishonour to Gaga, but looking at it abstractedly. The ring meant so much, and so little. Her marriage had meant so much and so little. A faint smile stole to her lips and played about them.

A stirring of Toby's body made her glance quickly down. His eyes were open, and he was staring solemnly at her. His hair was all roughened, and his dark face was puffed with sleep. He looked like her big baby, irresistibly lovable. The smile deepened; but she did not speak. She made no movement at all; and Toby, stretching out a lazy arm, put it round her waist.

"Ugh!" he said, grunting with satisfaction. With calm pleasure she enjoyed the knowledge of his great muscular strength; but she did not respond to him at all. Toby jerked towards her, so that his head rested against her side, and Sally mechanically crooked her arm lightly over his further cheek. Toby blinked a little, and yawned, and looked at the sunshine. "Wha's time?" he gaped. "Oh-o-oo."

"Dunno. Oo, bless me!" Sally roused herself. "I mustn't be late." She reached out for Toby's watch, on the table at his side of the bed, and held it up to the light. The time was half-past-seven. She looked at the old watch, a cheap one with a loud tick. "I'll give you a watch, one day," she said, condescendingly. "A watch."

"Here!" Toby's voice changed. He caught her wrist sharply—so sharply that Sally almost dropped the watch on the quilt. "What's that?" His tone was so strange that she was surprised, and tried to follow his glance. It rested upon her hand—upon the wedding ring. Sally's blood froze.

"Oh, that?" she said, with an attempt to be easy. "Can't come into a place like this.... I mean, without a ring of some sort."

"Oh?" asked Toby, sternly. "You know all about it, don't you?"

"Well?" Sally was frightened, but simulating defiance. "It's true, isn't it?"

"Where'd you get it?"

"Shop." She was so afraid that she was insolent.

"I s'pose you're used to this sort of thing," cried Toby. He sat up beside her, his face deeply crimsoned, his expression accusing. "Used to it, are you?"

"No!" answered Sally.

"What did you get it for?"

Sally could not hide her trembling. She was blanched, and her shoulder was raised as if to avoid a blow. It came. Toby released her wrist, and seized her shoulder. Roughly, he so shoved her away from him that she was thrown upon her face. She scrambled out of bed, and stood panting before him, while Toby, kicking down the bedclothes, seemed crouched upon the bed as if he might murderously spring at her. She watched his hands, fascinated by an imagination of their grip upon her throat.

"What did you get it for?" Toby repeated, in a voice of madness.

"To come here."

"Liar!" He leapt out of bed, and Sally, in a panic, turned to fly. She could not escape. Toby held her shoulder again. Again he savagely pushed her, so that she fell against the wall, her head striking it. Sally slid to the floor, shrinking from him, terrified now that death seemed so near. She did not scream. She could still have done so; but it was not her instinct to cry out. "You liar!" Toby said again. "What did you get it for? Christ!" He dragged Sally once again to her feet. His fingers were bruising her arm. She was physically helpless and half-stunned. "Is that the way you make your living?" demanded Toby, beside himself.

"No!" It was Sally's turn to shout. "No, you fool. You fool!"

"You dirty little liar! It is!"

"It's not!" cried Sally. With a tremendous effort for self-control she checked a sob that would have plunged her into hysteria. "I'm married!"

Toby fell away, his mouth open. The release sent Sally against the wall once more. He stood looking at her, his face grey, his eyes smouldering.

"You tell me that?" he said. "Married!"

"Yes. Married."

He did not speak. He eyed her with a sombre and threatening appraisement. Then, more quietly, he went on:

"You can't be. You're mine. You belong to me. Nobody else can't have you!"

"Nobody else can have me. But I'm married, all right," Sally told him. She was recovering some composure. When she moistened her lips she glanced sideways at him, like lightning. Toby had not struck her. He was too surprised.

"Married.... And you come here with me. Liar!"

"My husband's away.... We don't.... His mother's ill. I don't love him—never did. We were only married a few days ago. I wrote to you. You never got the letter."

"Oh, that's why...." Toby's tone was vengeful. His fists were clenched.

"See, Toby, I only love you. Only you. But he's rich. We.... I don't sleep with him, Toby. He's never...."

"You liar!" Toby approached her. Sally could see his teeth glistening.

"I swear it's true. Toby!"

Toby suddenly caught her a blow on the arm which sent her spinning across the tiny room. She held on to the mantelpiece to save a fall. They were both panting now; but Toby was like a bulldog. The colour was returning to his cheeks. He was watching Sally, as she was watching him. She was ready to dodge a further blow; but she knew that if he was determined to kill her nothing would stop him. She was filled with abject fear at her own physical powerlessness. But by now her wits were alert again. Toby made a movement, and Sally started, ready to dart away. He did not come nearer. A stupidity seemed to descend upon him.

A loud rap at the door startled them both.

"Hot water. Half-past seven. And less noise there!" came a loud voice. The whole scene was transformed by the interruption. Both became listless.

"Married!" Toby said, as if to himself. He shook his head.

"I love you," Sally told him.

He sat dully upon the bed. Timidly, for fear of another outburst, Sally approached him. At last, standing by his side, she held Toby's head to her breast, kissing him with little fierce kisses that must have carried their message to his heart. At last Toby's arms were raised, and around her, and she was pressed to him once more. Their lips met. Toby made a muffled, snarling sound that was a mixture of love and hatred and masterfulness. He held her with ferocity. Then, as suddenly, his muscles relaxed, until Sally by repeated endearments baffled his indignation and softened his anger. She was struggling with all her might to keep possession of him, moving each instant with more assurance among his dull thoughts and his easily-roused passions. As the moments passed she knew that she had kept him, and at this knowledge her own passion rose until it equalled Toby's.

"My love," she whispered. "My dear love."

xi

Later in the day, when she was able to think of all that had happened, Sally had an unexpected glimpse of the situation. She realised that she was a victor. She was almost too satisfied. She had no shame, no contrition; she merely knew that if she might still keep Toby her marriage with Gaga would be bearable. She had none of the turmoil of the conventional married woman who takes a lover; but then she had never been trained to be scrupulous. She was still young enough to be intoxicated by her own prowess. She could manage Gaga; she could manage Toby; she could manage the business—there was no end to her power. More than anything else, it was necessity to her to gratify her sense of power. If that necessity had been removed she would have known herself for a reckless fool; but the demand for power obliterated every inconvenient thought of risk. As for a sense of honour, Sally had been born without one.

All the girls looked at her "very old-fashioned," as they would have said, when she arrived in the morning; but as the day wore on, and there was no further telephone message for her from Gaga, they began to forget what had happened on the previous day. Sally worked like a mouse, her brain exulting in its vivid memories of her time with Toby; and she did not think of Gaga at all. She only hoped that he would not come to the office. She was feeling too tired to deal effectively with any peevishness from Gaga; although, the causes of her hysteria having been removed, she was not likely to repeat the failure of that other restless night. A heaviness hung upon her as the day wore on; a kind of thick readiness for sleep. She yawned over her work. The workroom seemed stuffy, the day unusually long. The nervous strain of the past few days was reacting, and even Sally's vitality was shaken by the consequences of her successive excitements. When tea-time came she was relieved. But there had been no news of Gaga, or from him: not even a message through Miss Summers. Miss Summers grew more and more fidgetty and anxious as the hours went by.

"I do hope nothing's happened," she clucked. "So funny not having heard. I wonder if I ought to telephone to ask. Perhaps Mr. Bertram's ill. Did you see him last night? D'you think I ought to ring up? I'm so worried. It's so strange, and Madam being so ill, and that."

"I shouldn't worry," urged Sally. "He'll 'phone fast enough if there's anything to say. Look at yesterday."

"Yes; but perhaps he's ill himself."

"Sick," commented Sally. "He's bilious, you know."

Miss Summers shook her head, and sighed.

"Yes," she readily agreed. "I'm afraid he's not the man his mother is."

They had hardly finished speaking when Miss Summers was called to the telephone. She was away for two or three minutes; and returned with tears streaming down her cheeks. All their pink plumpness was softened into a blur of tearful weakness. She was bent and dissolved under disaster. As she made her way up the long workroom to her place the girls all craned their necks to look at Miss Summers, and one or two—the kinder ones—rose to see if they could do anything to comfort her. But it was to Sally that Miss Summers turned, and within an inch of Sally's cheeks that she shook her tear-stained face. At first she could not speak; but grimaced like a child, as if her cold nose was smarting. Sally was first to hear the news; but all of them had known it from the first glimpse of Miss Summers in tears.

"She's gone," cried Miss Summers, "Poor soul, she's gone. And what will happen to us I don't know."

"We'll be all right," Sally murmured, with singular confidence. A shock had slightly discomposed her, but it was not a shock of sorrow for the death of Madame Gala. Rather was it a passing thrill of dismay at her own responsibility, which her reassuring speech had been intended to remove.

"She's dead.... Madam's dead...." ran through the workroom. One girl hurried to tell Miss Rapson and the workers in her department, who came crowding immediately into the room, agog with excitement. They all gathered together in a body, and then in detached groups, talking fast.

"I s'pose we'll all have a day off for the funeral," somebody said with a giggle.

"Oo, yes. Sure to. And have to wear mourning," added another girl, more solemnly and hopefully.

Sally stood, as if by right, with Miss Summers and Miss Rapson. She was definitely a principal figure in the scene. Just as the other girls began to notice this, and murmuringly to comment upon it as a piece of characteristic impudence, Miss Summers had a quick return of memory. Gesticulating with helpless impatience, she said:

"Oh, Sally; I'd quite forgotten. Mr. Bertram is ill. And the nurse said he was asking to see you. Yes, asking to see ... Miss Minto."

Asking to see Sally Minto! There was a thrill among the girls that was even greater than the one which they had felt at the news of Madam's death. Gaga asking to see Sally Minto! Whew! Everything became electric. Rose Anstey coloured deeply, and turned upon her heel. Sally knew they were all staring at her, like fish in an aquarium. With something approaching dignity she ignored them and directly addressed Miss Summers.

"Did you mean he wanted me to go at once?" she asked.

"Yes, child. Yes. At once. Better run along now...." Miss Summers was distracted, tearful, inclined to kiss Sally, and altogether without knowledge of what she was doing or what she ought to do. "Wait.... Tell him—perhaps I ought to write a letter? Oh, dear! I don't know...." She pressed her fingers to her temples. "No, tell him how sorry we all are. Say if he wants me.... Run along, run along!"

"Yes, Miss Summers."

In a very leisurely manner, Sally rolled up her pinafore and put her work away. Then she washed and dressed herself to go out. She walked back through the workroom like a queen, sedately bidding Miss Summers "good-afternoon" and smiling a cool farewell to the girls. The buzz of their amazed whispering followed her into the waiting-room. She felt their eyes like stings in her back. On the way downstairs the memory of the scene and an understanding of the girls' feelings made her laugh. Well, that was that; and she was face to face with her problem in its entirety. Unconsciously, Sally walked more erect.

Sally never went back to the workroom. She hurried from it to the old house in Kensington in which the Merricks had lived for years; and as she saw the house, so black with dust, and the steps that led up to the heavy front door, even Sally's heart quailed. She hesitated for several minutes before going up the steps, and loitered there, a little figure in a grey dress, trim and chic, but not at all the girl to take control of such a mansion and of the difficulties which lay within. She could not tell what a mass of custom the house indicated; but her instinct was enough to make her feel extraordinarily small, extraordinarily untrained and incapable. It had been very well for her to suppose that everything could be seized and controlled at a glance. The reality was too solid for a longer dream. Thoughtless, over-confident as her fantasy had been, she had the sense which a child has when a running man comes threateningly near—of a great shape, of unexpected size and dangerousness, looming out of the focussed picture, and setting all previous conceptions at nought. Here was this giant house, and Madam lying dead in it, and servants who would resent her appearance, and Gaga; and Sally was such a little girl in the face of a definite trial. She was a little girl, and she would never be able to deal with what lay ahead. It was a long, devastating spasm of doubt, like a trembling of the earth. The house towered above her, huge and gloomy; and other houses, equally oppressive, continued from the Merricks' house, with basements and railings and great black fronts and lace curtains, until the road turned and its end was unseen. And Sally, who had lived all her life in small flats and single rooms, was shaken. Her heart sank. She entered the house. Her head was high, from pride; but her qualms were intense. An atmosphere of solemn melancholy made everybody speak in low tones. She had difficulty in remaining calm.

All the rooms were large rooms, filled with large furniture and old pictures and prints. Madam had made her home for comfort; and the taste which had marked her other work was here subdued. An old clock ticked steadily; and if there were no ancient horrors at least the house within did not belie its serious front. Sally was like a little doll, shrinking under the weight of such solid comfort, and not yet able to appraise it in terms of possession and disposal. She was still shy and timid. Wherever, upon this first entrance, she looked round for encouragement, she found none. During that first evening she was so miserable that she could have run away. She was like a child that goes for the first time to school, and feels bereft of every familiar support and association.

But in the morning Sally found everything better. She saw Gaga's doctor, and she talked to the three servants. She telephoned to Miss Summers and asked her to come to the house in the afternoon. She wrote to Mrs. Perce and to Toby. She nursed Gaga and refused to see the dead body of his mother. Every minute which she spent in the house increased her familiarity with it; and her youth and smallness captivated the three middle-aged servants, who were glad to have somebody there whom they could advise. Sally had long been able to behave as somebody other than a workgirl, and the servants were so well-behaved that they did not make any attempt to be too much at ease with her. Sally, moreover, looked down with all the contempt of her class upon women who worked in domestic service—SKIVVIES! She was drawlingly refined with them, but not grotesquely so, and they respected her.

First in importance among the things which Sally had to seem to arrange was the funeral. She handed all the details to the undertaker. This showed her to be a general. From the first she followed the only possible plan—to give carte blanche to those who had to deal with matters of urgency. Gaga was all the time ill. His mother's death had so broken down his strength and his self-control that Sally often found him weak with crying; a pathetic figure, in bed, woebegone and feeble. His delight at seeing her was so violent that he had covered her hands with kisses before he fell back exhausted upon his pillow. He constantly called for her. The servants noticed with clucked tongues how feverish was his devotion; but they also recognised Sally's patience. Sally was angelic to Gaga. She tended him so protectively that one might have thought her loving. And in the rest of her free time she tried hard to learn about the house. Mistakes she made, of course, and many of them; but she was still shrewd, and if she was often superficial and hasty, at least she was alert.

Miss Summers Sally found invaluable. Once Miss Summers had overcome her surprise at the new order and once she had found that Sally was the old Sally, who relied upon her, she rose to every call. Her kindness and her generalship were unfailing. She it was who kept the business moving at a trying time. In her hands orders were filled with the expected promptitude and the customary excellence. She obsequiously interviewed those who came to be fitted; and her knowledge of the business enabled her to satisfy these customers and make them understand that in spite of the extraordinary conditions they could still rely upon proper attention. She was unsparing of her time and her devotion. She had at last a satisfactory mission.

And all this Sally recognised. While Gaga claimed her attention, and household affairs worried her, she did not trouble very much about the business. Miss Summers would come in the evening to Kensington, tell her the news, and give advice upon other matters. The two had long talks at night. Sally suddenly knew how valuable a friend she had in Miss Summers. She knew the value of an unselfish readiness to serve; and she herself was generous enough and, in a sense, imaginative enough not to exploit Miss Summers. There was a good understanding between them. And Sally, as she looked round at the mahogany furniture in this old house, and saw the dull carpets and engravings which Madam had gathered together in other days for the suitable adornment of her rooms, could think of no better repayment than a gift of some of the things which Miss Summers might prize, and which Sally and Gaga could never use. It was characteristic of her that she made this definite reservation; but with Gaga's consent she finally made Miss Summers happy by such a lavish present that Sally might have done many strange things without ever losing the loyalty of her adjutant.

She slept by herself in a room connected with Gaga's room by an open door. She was thus able to tend him during his frequent fits of sickness and weakness, which often took the form of long hypochondriacal attacks; and was at the same time given opportunity for active thought and planning. Sally was very happy in these days, for nothing gives greater happiness than incessant occupation that is flattering to the vanity. She walked with a new air, looked about her with confidence and a sense of ownership. Above all, she had reached that almost super-human state—she knew herself to be indispensable.

xiii

When Gaga seemed to be well enough, they went out for a time each day, and Sally tried to interest him in plans for a change of home. He was still so feeble that he was rather listless and querulous; but when she told him the sort of flat she wanted nearer town, and the sort of furniture, Gaga caught fire, and became enthusiastic. His eyes glowed. Much more gently than ever before, and to that extent more tolerably, he kissed her. He proclaimed Sally's genius. Everything she suggested appeared to him more excellent than the last thing: if she had been a silly girl she might have been made reckless. But having interested him she became rather afraid of his eager support. The flat was to be her flat. She did not want Gaga blundering in with enthusiastic mistakes. And another thing was that the doctor warned her about the dangers of excitement.

"Your husband's not a strong man, Mrs. Merrick," he said. "He's not even a sound man. You don't want him to get too excited. It's bad for him. Go slow."

"I'll try," agreed Sally. But it was with a shrug. "You see how he is. I mustn't be out of his sight; and yet something's got to be done."

"You're a very plucky girl," remarked the doctor feebly; and he went away.

Sally's shrug had been sincere. She would have preferred to do everything alone; but to do so would have been to make Gaga fully as ill as any over-excitement could do. They accordingly went about together, looking for a flat. They discovered one at last in Mayfair; and decorations were begun there. It was not a large flat, and the rooms were not all large; but it was cosy, and the furnishing of it was going to give Sally a satisfaction hard to exceed. The two of them exulted in the flat. They walked through and through it. They saw the wallpapers and the paint, and admired everything in the most delicious manner possible.

And then the doctor's warning was justified. Gaga collapsed. He fainted in the flat, overcome by the smell of paint and the excitement of proprietorship. With the help of one of the painters Sally took him home in a cab and put him to bed. The doctor arrived, nodded, and was not in the least surprised or alarmed. Sally was merely to be Gaga's nurse once more. It did not matter to the doctor, who had no interest in Gaga except as a patient.

"It's rough on you, though," he said to Sally. He was a bald man of fifty, with a cold eye and a cold, fish-like hand. He was interested in nothing outside his profession and his meals. To him Sally was a plucky little thing; but Sally could not find that he thought anything more about her. She shrugged again. "So sorry," said the doctor. "Good-bye."

When he had gone, Sally frowned. Bother! All her plans were interrupted. Her energies were subdued. Thoughtfully, she began to consider how far she might act alone. She wondered whether she might persuade Gaga to let her go out in the mornings or the afternoons. He must do so, and yet she knew he would not like it. Although the decision always lay with her, he had the sick and nervous man's fussy wish to seem to make a choice. He wanted to be there, to be heard, to announce Sally's decision in a loud voice as his own.

"What a man he is!" thought Sally. "Big kid. Got to have a say in everything. And he can't!" The last words were spoken aloud, so vehemently did she feel them. "He can't, because he doesn't know. O-o-oh!"

She beat one hand upon the other, in a sudden passion. For a moment she had an unexpected return of hysteria. And as she took two or three fierce paces Sally without warning felt dizzy. She clung to a chair; and the dizziness immediately passed. It frightened her, none the less, because she had been feeling unwell for some days, and she had a horror of illness.

"Here, here!" she exclaimed. "None of that. I mustn't get ill. Oh, lor! If I was to get ill wouldn't there be a shimozzle! Gaga'd go off his head. And everything else—pouf!"

It amused her to realise this. It made her forget the unexplained sick dizziness which had given rise to her reflections, because the thing which Sally above everything else had always desired was to be as important as she now found herself. At the age of eighteen she was dominating a world which she had long since determined to conquer.

xiv

During the week following, Sally had no time for any thing but attendance upon Gaga. She was herself feeling sick and wretched; and Gaga was very ill indeed. He was sometimes extremely feeble, so that a lethargy fell upon him and he lay so quiet that Sally believed him to be asleep. But at her first movement he would unclose his eyes and groan her name, groping with his finger to detain her. So she sat in his big square bedroom with the drab walls and the plain furniture, watching the daylight fade and pondering to herself. It was a gloom period, and it had a perceptible effect upon her vitality. At other times Gaga would rally, would even sit up and talk in his old stammer, his grey face whitened and sharpened by illness. Always he demanded her kisses, although at times she had such horror of being made love to by one so ill that she was pricked by a perfect frenzy of nerves. He would sit by the fire, passing his thin hand across her shoulders, stooping and caressing her and catching her neck with his fingers in order to bring her cheek the more submissively to his own. His lips were ever encroaching, and his fevered clasp was so incessant and so vibrant with overstrung excitement as to create a sense of repulsion. It was a tyranny, to which Sally listlessly yielded because she had not the spirit to resist. She also knew that resistance would make him ill again; and however much she chafed at his kisses she chafed still more at the constant attention demanded by Gaga's state of health, which kept her ever there and delayed intolerably the execution of those plans which would have interposed a relief from these intimacies. Then again he would be seized with fits of vomiting which shook his frame and made him so ill that he had to be helped back to bed and comforted as if he were a child. It was a weary time, much shorter than it appeared to be in her slow watching of the clock; and she could not have endured it at all if her resolution had been less tough. Sometimes, too, Sally knew that she was rather fond of Gaga. Her feeling for him was a mixture of emotion; but she never actively disliked him, even when she was bored by his constant show of possessiveness. The truth was that she had grown to be afraid. She was like a Frankenstein, and her monstrous plan had become too great to be carried through alone. She was frightened that Gaga would die; and she did not want him to die. He was necessary to her, because at present he was the key to her scheme of immediate life.

Each evening Miss Summers came; and the tale she brought of orders given and executed was satisfactory. But even Miss Summers knew that things were not going well. All that practical direction which Madam had brought to the business was lost. Everything that had given distinction in the choice of material and style was in danger. There were new purchases to be made, and new designs furnished. All that vast part in the business which occurred before a customer entered into negotiations had been managed entirely by Madam, and it was suspended in her absence. Some of this work was routine, and could be conducted without her; but as the days passed it became evident that important matters were being delayed, that they were accumulating, that unless something could be done quickly to check the slide the business would become mechanical and its individuality be destroyed. Thus Sally learnt that her ambition had led her to grasp at power which she could not wield. If she had been able to go to work she could have learnt very easily. She had such quick taste, and such confidence, that, with Miss Summers at her side, in spite of many mistakes, she could have dealt with much that was now slipping. But she was unable to leave Gaga. When she tried to explain the needs of the moment to him Gaga turned weakly away, incapable of grasping more than the fact that she was his wife and that he needed her. At a speech concerning the business he shrugged his shoulders, and became stupidly ineffective.

One night, when she was in bed, Sally thought of all this, and was first despondent and then dispirited. The mood intensified. Once it had gripped her she knew no peace. She was in helpless torment. Before she knew quite what she was doing she had drawn the bedclothes over her head and was bitterly sobbing. Little disjointed phrases were jerked from her lips in this painful abandonment to fear and the sense of lonely powerlessness. She was at last unrestrained in her admission of failure. She did not know ... she did not know. By herself she could do nothing. And there was nobody to whom she could turn for succour. Her mother was useless, Mrs. Perce was useless. Her one support was Miss Summers, and Miss Summers this evening had been unable to hide her trepidation, but had sat licking her lips and blinking her eyes, which held such concern that she could in no way disguise the cause of her gloom. Miss Summers also, then, was full of foreboding; and Sally, tied fast here, a child, thrown off her balance by illness and nervous excitement, had lost confidence in her star.

When she was calm again she slept; but in the morning the preoccupation returned to her, and her head ached, and the tears filled her eyes as though she were fighting against grief. And her first visit to Gaga disgusted her and made her feel the more miserable. She had often been more poignantly affected, but never had she experienced such a sense of complete distaste for life. She was like a child given an impossible task to perform; and instead of being able to rise on the wings of her arrogance as she was in the habit of doing, Sally was weighed down by leaden sickness and fear. She went slowly downstairs to have her breakfast, and sat solitary in the big brown dining-room which overlooked a square of grass and a high wall. A dismal grey oppressed the atmosphere, and an autumn chill. She could not eat, could only sniff despairingly and drink a cup of tea and wander to the fire and lay her forehead against the mantelpiece, which was cooling indeed, but without comfort. Its hard coldness was unbearable. Sally's arms crept up as a pillow. She stared downwards at the dead fire.

"O-o-oh!" she groaned bitterly. "I wish I was dead! I do wish I was dead!" And at the sound of her wretched voice Sally once more gave way completely and began to sob aloud. She was beaten, and her spirit was gone.

xv

And so more days passed, each filled with a sort of numbing dread. Sally thought of the business, of her future, of Toby—from whom she had received several letter reflecting his moods of ferociousness and resentment,—and of the bonds which kept her tied to the house. She knew during all this time no peace. She grew thinner, and began to take less care of herself. She was not aware of the beginning of a loss of self-respect, but it was there. She—she who had always been so strict in regard to her toilette and dress, whatever her state of mind—went down to breakfast one morning in a kimono which she had found in Madam's wardrobe and shortened for herself. It was a proof that she no longer cared for her appearance. She lay through the nights often only half-asleep, in a stupor which presently led her to an attitude almost of indifference to the needs of the day. And for the rest of the time Sally was so lethargic that it one morning occurred to her to think that she had caught from Gaga whatever was the unnamed illness from which he was suffering. The thought once arisen, flew to her head. It became a horror. She had heard of bad fruit corrupting fruit that was sound and this was a new preoccupation for her. When Gaga would have kissed her lips she turned away in sudden nausea, fighting instinctively against a subjection which her indifference had hitherto made allowable. And she had several times to invent an excuse to be alone, so active had her distress become; and in these absences she would walk vehemently up and down the dining-room until she was forced by exhaustion to sit or by a message from Gaga to return to his room.

"Why, whatever's come to me?" she demanded. "It's awful! I'm ill."

The doctor called every day to see Gaga, and spoke as though there was a definite improvement in his patient's health. The medicine Gaga was taking would finally give him strength. Already he was beginning to eat more, and beginning also to retain what he had eaten.

"It's nerves, you know," the doctor told Sally one day. "Mere nerves. Your husband's run down. He's not strong. He's had a shock. As soon as he's well enough he ought to be got away for a holiday. You take him away. About the end of next week, if he makes good progress. Take him to the sea."

"He hates it," cried Sally. "Upsets him."

"Oh." The doctor considered. "Where did you go for your honeymoon? Penterby—well, that would do, if you can take drives to the sea. He doesn't want too bracing a place. And now, Mrs. Merrick, I've been noticing you lately. You're run down, too. We can't have you ill. You've been very plucky; but you've had a great strain, and all this nursing has worn you out. I'm going to have a look at you...."

Sally was conscious of a sinking of the heart.

"I'm quite all right!" she protested. She could not have told what intuition had created this panic; but her heart had begun instantly to thump in her breast, and she became, as she had done once before, almost dizzy. She could not say anything more. She submitted to his examination, and answered his questions. It was an ordeal, and she watched his serious face with its cold eyes, and felt his chilly hand, and guessed at what he would say. The doctor seemed appallingly slow, appallingly deliberate and immovable and ruthless in his perceptions. She was terrified. The room wavered before her; and her fright grew greater and greater. He was very patient. She felt strange trust in him; but always the same dread, which made her teeth chatter a little. Soon he had finished; and then he looked at her with a slight smile and a nod.

"Yes," he said, reflectively. "Oh, there's nothing to be alarmed about at all. Nothing. All you've got to do is to take care of yourself, and not worry; and it will do you good to get away. Women in your condition, especially if it's the first, often...."

"My condition!" exclaimed Sally. It was like a blow. "Doctor!"

"Nothing to be alarmed at," he repeated. "You'll be very happy after a bit. You know, you're going to have a baby." He stood away from her, smiling in a friendly way.

"A baby!" Sally was shaken from head to foot. She stared at the doctor in an extremity of horror. "A baby!"

He patted her arm. Before she was able to collect herself he had gone—a busy doctor with a long round and a large practice. Sally sat looking at the fire. Then she rose. A scream came to her lips. Again and again she shuddered. A baby! A baby! Toby's baby!

xvi

The news confirmed what Sally had never consciously thought, but what she now felt she had known for days. If anything had been needed to complete her despair it was this. She felt suicidal. She could have borne illness, even failure in the business, even all the complications of distress which she had been already experiencing; but the knowledge of ultimate disgrace so inevitable drove her mad. Vainly Sally's mind flew in every direction for relief—the doctor might be wrong; the coming of babies could be prevented; perhaps Gaga might never know—she could persuade him to go away, could go away herself, could do a hundred things to tide over the difficulty. And at the end of all these twistings of the mind she would find herself still terribly in danger, and would fight against hideous screaming fits by lying on the floor or on a couch and crushing her handkerchief into her mouth. She was quite overcome by her new disaster, the fruit of wild temptation, and the consequence of her whole course of action. Used as Sally was to meeting every emergency with cool shrewdness, she could not bring to her present situation the necessary philosophy, because she was ill, and fear-stricken, and made crazy by the impossibility of finding a solution to her anxieties.

Hour after hour was spent with horrible nightmarish imaginings, in frenzied self-excuses and improvised expedients. And never did there come one moment of peace in the midst of all this panic. Sally had no friend. More and more she began to realise this. She had no friend. She had made use of people, they were fond of her, would submit to her; but she had no friend. More than anything in the world she now needed a friend. There was nobody in whom she could confide, from whose love and sympathy she could draw the strength which at this point she so greatly needed. She had a husband, a lover, a mother—to none of these could she go with the truth. It needed all Sally's egotism to make the truth seem capable of justification, or indeed to make it seem even credible, so different is the standard by which we judge our own actions from that which we apply to others. Sally saw everything so much in relation to all that she had ever thought and felt that she could not understand how her impulses might horrify one coming to them only after translation into action. She only knew that she could not betray herself unreservedly to anybody with the hope of being found innocent. The knowledge made her at first full of terror; and the terror and the successive elaborate self-explanation, given to an unresponsive silence which she could easily suppose to be hostile, made her obstinate; then she became the more passionately afraid. She could have stormed, lied, wriggled; but she could never hope to escape the consequences that she dreaded.

At times Sally could not bear to be with Gaga at all. She told him she was ill, and that the doctor said she must go out; and in spite of his protests she would run from the house and walk rapidly for an hour about Kensington, and even into Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. The weather made no difference to her. She was desperate, and must seek some relief from the horror of being cooped up in that house with her secret. She had begged the doctor to give no hint of it to Gaga, and had tried to pretend to herself that he had been mistaken in his diagnosis; but her pretence was of no avail, because each day she became more certain that he had been right. And still she could not think of any way out. She had been betrayed by a single act of irresistible passion.

Presently, as her frenzy spent itself, Sally began to think more collectedly. She remembered Toby's last letter. She began to think of him. She thought even that she could run away and be divorced and abandon all her schemes for the sake of the baby. But as soon as Sally had such an imagining she knew that it was an impossibility for her. Only as a last resource could she accept her disaster. All her self-confidence fought against it. She must find some other way. At first she thought it would be simple to do so; but as her brain worked upon the problem she found so many difficulties in the way that she again lost hope. The baby would ruin everything. Finally the return of Toby seemed to her to be the first necessity. She must see him. She could do nothing until she saw him. Longing seized her—a quick sense that at least he was her lover, and therefore her partner. She wrote to Toby, asking him to come and meet her as soon as he reached London. Then she waited, her exhausted torments having left her in a mood of glittering-eyed sullen misery that might at any moment rise sharply to angry shrillness. Calm hid genuine fear, and it was the calm of one who has no hope other than self-control.

Gradually Sally came to know the big house in exact detail, because in these days she was forced to find occupation for herself. The drawing-room, the dining-room, all the rooms upstairs, were ransacked. They held no treasures, indeed; but they gave Sally a rather distracting interest because they aroused her sense of possession. She had wanted to own things—and these, although they were not what she had pictured, were property. There was the beginning of bourgeoise acquisitiveness and pride of ownership in her, after all. Scratch the worker and you found the bourgeoise. There were carefully-hoarded lengths of rich material in the cupboards, lace and ribbons and shawls in different chests of drawers; upon Madam's dressing-table was a manicure set and a set of tortoiseshell-backed brushes; in the drawers of the same table were perfumes in great variety. Far below stairs, Sally found the wine cellar, and although it was small in size it contained more kinds of wine than she had been able to imagine hitherto, and filled her with an almost grinning satisfaction. Not yet was her sense of social ambition roused; but it was born. She began to look ahead. Parties, with the wine as a feature of them, were imagined. She began, in a manner, to picture what she would lose by defeat. The baby would ruin all. And she was helpless, because she could speak to nobody. She was condemned. There would be ruin, dreadful ruin, and she was glimpsing the very things which she might have enjoyed. Fresh paroxysms shook Sally. Somehow—somehow, and by some means not as yet to be discovered, she must save the situation. And Toby must save her. Toby must find a way. He must do it because he loved her. It was his duty. He must find a way to save her. And even as she frantically said this, Sally knew that she herself must control the situation. Thus early in her life she had learnt that for a girl of her type men, whatever her desire for any other state, must always be employed under her direction. Toby would obey. He might do the donkey-work; but in fact Sally must lead. It was her fate, the fate of the girl with her own star to follow.

Nevertheless, it was upon Toby that the immediate future depended. Not yet has woman the power to attain her ends except by and through men. Sally waited in ever-increasing excitement for some word from Toby, some hint of his coming. She was kept within the house at all times except during her short flights in the morning or afternoon. She could not be long away from the house. And she must rely upon a letter, and then perhaps a brief meeting, for her purposes. The time was going. Gaga was getting better, was growing more and more like the man in whose company she had gone to Penterby. His demand upon her presence was increasing in power, because he was sitting up, leaving his room, coming in search of her. Sally felt that already he was beginning to exercise an inquisition. A tremor shook her nerves. Sometimes it seemed to her that Gaga's glance held a strangeness, almost a faint suspicion. When she thought that she was conscious of a feeling akin to aversion.

Aversion had not yet arrived. Gaga was still to be despised. But Sally already felt that she might presently find her task of deception very hard under the constant scrutiny of such futile devotedness as he displayed. And Toby did not write. She had no means of knowing where he was, whether the voyage upon which he was engaged would be long or short, how much more time must elapse before their meeting. The suspense was killing her. More than once, hearing Gaga calling to her, Sally had hidden from him, and, at discovery, had been unable to conceal the hard coldness of her feeling for him. If Toby would only come! If he would only come! She thought that her nerve must before long give way, and once it had gone she would be prematurely ruined. She felt trapped. She even, desperately, would slip on a coat at nights and walk up and down outside the house, in case Toby should be lurking near on the chance of seeing her. She thought he might come thus. And on each occasion when she went out of the house in this way she returned to find Gaga standing in the dining-room, with the door open in such a way that he could command a view of the inside of the front door. The knowledge that he was waiting for her, and watching her, filled Sally with cold fury. His innocent delight at her return had the air of being a pretence. She could not suppose his eager caresses to be other than penitence for suspicion or an assertion of his claims upon her in perpetuity. The distress made her unresponsive, even repressive. Her foot tapped upon the floor even while she could not wholly quell his convulsive nervous embrace. And Toby did not come.

At last, one evening, her guess was justified. She had taken her coat, and had walked to the end of the road; and just as she turned back, without hope, she saw a burly figure almost opposite. It was Toby, in a sailor's short thick jacket, and his neck muffled, and a cap over his eyes. He was standing in the shadow, and as she crossed to him allowed Sally to enter that same embracing darkness which safely hid them both. She gave a little savage cry, and was in his strong arms, almost crazed with relief and her physical sense of his so long withheld nearness. She could feel herself shuddering and trembling, but she was not directly conscious of this. All she felt was a passionate joy at being able to abandon all her nervous self-control to this firmness and clenched vigour.

"Oh, Toby, Toby!" she whimpered, clutching him; and then no more for several minutes. Toby did not speak. He hugged Sally until she was breathless, and his hot kiss made her cheek burn. She pressed her forehead with all her strength against his breast, and longed that in this moment she might for ever lose all knowledge of the trials which beset her. The trembling persisted for a long time; and then, as she was comforted, it began to subside.

"My girl, my girl!" muttered Toby, in a thick voice, warm against her ear.

"Toby, listen.... Toby, I'm going to have a baby—it's your baby. What shall I do? Toby!" Sally clung to him. "I'm so frightened, Toby."

"Baby? Christ!" As suddenly, he repulsed her. "You say it's me. It's a lie! How d'you know? You little liar, you. What's your game?"

"Of course it's yours," fiercely cried Sally. "I told you."

"D'you think I believe that!" He was brutally incredulous. He held her away. "Why, you dirty little liar, you'd swear anything."

A ghastly anger took command of Sally.

"I told you," she steadily repeated. But she made no attempt to go back to him. They stood quite apart in the difficult gloom.

"I know you did. You told me you loved me. You married him."

"I told you," she obstinately went on. "I told you. I don't know what to do. He'll find out. He's bound to find out."

"He'll think it's his," said Toby. "By God, I believe it is."

"You're mad!" cried Sally. "He knows it can't be. And you know it, too. I tell you I shall be found out and disgraced." She was not crying. Her pride was aroused. She was full of scorn for one who could disbelieve what she herself knew to be true.

"Well?" Toby demanded. "What of it? Whose fault is it?" He was brutally angry, and a little frightened and blustering. They were still at arm's length in the darkness of the deserted street. There was no lamp near them, and the houses behind were unlighted. Sally's heart fell. She was almost paralysed at Toby's tone. She was puzzled and chagrined and angry. And then a change of mood came abruptly upon her.

"Don't you love me?" she mournfully asked. "I thought you did. I love you, Toby. I thought you loved me.

"I used to," came the grim reply out of the night. He sounded cautious, doubtful.

"Not any longer?" She withdrew herself wholly from him. They were completely sundered. Toby was failing her. She was stone cold to him—cold to all the world.

"Who says I don't?" asked Toby, in a grumbling way. He put out his arm, but Sally stepped back. "Here."

"No," she cried, sharply. Toby was not to take her for granted, not to hold her and make love to her. She was in earnest, and he was giving himself away as one who had taken what he could get.

"I do." At last Toby's sullen assent reached Sally.

"You think I'm a liar," she persisted. "You don't love me." It was bitter.

There was a silence. Toby was almost invisible. Both were lost in the dull estrangement of that troubled mood.

"Yes, I do," he muttered. "You are a liar."

"I'm not. It's true what I say. If Gaga finds out...."

"Well? What d'you suppose I can do? I can't do anything. It's you who's got to do something."

Sally thought for a moment at that savagely bullying tone, which was without love or understanding. She had a sudden sweep of hatred of Toby as an animal that took no heed of responsibility or consequences. The chill she had felt already deepened and filled her heart. Her loneliness was intensified. She gave a short laugh of bitter distraction. A greater fierceness shook her, and she began to walk slowly away from him.

"Oh, well then, I'm done," she said, with cold recklessness. "All right."

"Sally!" He came slowly after her; but his pursuit was not the old vigorous insistence for which she longed. He wanted Sally—not a baby, not a difficulty. He would shirk anything but the fulfilment of his passion. Instantly, she felt that he never would have married her if the time had come.

"No!" It was a harsh cry. "Don't touch me. Go on, push off.... I'm done with you." She walked more rapidly. She was only a little way now from the house, a hatless, disconsolate figure, oppressed and rigid.

"Sally." But he was still slow to follow. Sally cracked her fingers. She was finished with him. Her heart and her feet alike were leaden. She was too far gone for tears or sobs. It was not anguish that she felt; but bitterness so great that she could only hate Toby. She had loved him so much! And this was the end of him. She felt her love killed at a blow, and she was without resource.

Suddenly strong fingers were upon Sally's shoulder. In other days she would have been dominated. Not so now. She wrenched herself free, and walked on. There was no attempt to run. She was finished ... finished. Some further sound she heard; but it was unintelligible. Toby, presented with a real problem which a man who loved her would have solved, had been proved a doubting coward. She felt wronged, deceived. She had always expected violence from him, but she had always expected him to know that she truly loved him, whatever her actions might seem otherwise to suggest. Realisation of his ignorance destroyed her. Even at the gate Sally might still have been won; but as she came abreast of it she saw that the front door was open, and Gaga standing upon the top step. Coldly, she shut the gate; and walked resolutely up the steps. Toby was left dodging out of the circle of light, a pitiful conspirator. Gaga was silhouetted, a long lean figure, against the light of the hall. He peered down into the darkness.

"Sally, is that you?" he exclaimed. "I was quite anxious."

"Were you?" It was listless, scornful.

As she passed him, Gaga gazed still into the darkness.

"Is that somebody with you?" he asked. "It looks...."

Sally went into the house, and as he followed her she closed the front door quietly. It was strange to come from the black chilliness of the street into this new solid warmth and comfort. In the hall they faced one another. For once Sally was as grey as he—as grey and trembling.

"I thought.... I thought it was a man," said Gaga.

"Oh, did you?" Sally slipped off her coat, and threw it upon a chair. She was listening intently.

"Wasn't it?" Gaga did not touch her. He looked down with a startled expression. "It looked like a man out there.... Wasn't it?"

"You'd better go out and see," advised Sally, with snapping teeth. "Then you'll be sure." As a fury possessed her, she turned upon him like a cat at bay, all her teeth showing. "Funny if you were spying on me without any reason, wouldn't it be!"

She was so reckless that she did not measure consequences. She was in no mood to be cautious or considerate. Leaving him there Sally went into the dining-room, and when Gaga entered upon her heels she went out of the room again and slowly up the stairs.

xvii

But all the time, although she seemed to ignore him, Sally with a part of her consciousness was listening and watching. She dreaded to hear the groan of the gate upon its rusted hinges, the noise of a knock, or the gentle sound which the front door would make if Gaga accepted her challenge. Her heart was almost silent as she waited, and then, as the minutes passed without interruption, her relaxation was half relief and half disappointment. Something within her had craved this crisis which had not arrived. Some sensual longing for violence was frustrate. Sally was alone with Gaga, and Gaga, humble and obedient, was in her track, coming slowly and affectionately after her. As she saw from the landing the top of his dark, grey-streaked head she almost screamed with fury. It was in that moment that aversion for him rose in a tumult from her heart. She hated Toby, but for his base cruelty alone. She hated Gaga for his inescapable possessiveness and gentle persecution. It was a horror to Sally in her abnormal condition. She began to run up the next flight of stairs, and tripped upon her skirt. The stumble brought some little sense to her. She rose, holding the balustrade. Shot through and through with bitterness as she was, she yet clutched at sanity. When Gaga came abreast of her Sally took his arm; and they completed the journey together.

"Sorry I was beastly," she said, with a little pinch of the arm. "Got the jumps."

"I know.... I know," whispered Gaga. "We'll go away. We'll go very ... very soon."

"Now?" Sally demanded. "To-morrow? Could we go to-morrow?"

"Well ... well, perhaps not ... to-morrow. The day after?" He was hesitant, and did not oppose her. Sally's lip curled. What a man! Yes ... yes ... yes; but the baby! She was again desperately shaken.

"Why not to-morrow?" she cried, almost spitefully. "Why hang about?"

Gaga wavered. He began to kiss her. His hands, holding hers, were clammy. She had a glimpse of the black space under his eyes, and the swollen yellowness of the whites of his eyes, and his grey cheeks, so lined and creased, and the dreadful salmon colour of his dry lips. In his arms though she was, Sally shuddered violently, aversion recurring with such strength that she could not control her repugnance. This was her husband—her husband. Her eyes were strained away from him.

"You're cold," Gaga murmured. "Poor little girl.... You're ... you're cold."

"Yes, I'm cold," agreed Sally, with a violent effort for grim self-repression. "That's what's the matter with me. I stayed out too long. I oughtn't to have gone out this evening." She again laughed slightly, her laugh so sneering that even Gaga looked up as though he had been startled.

"We'll go to bed early," he said. "It's cold to-night. Let's have something hot, and go to bed. We can't have ... have you falling ill. It's nursing me that's made you ... queer."

"Yes, it's all my nursing." Sally spoke in a dry voice, and when he released her she went over to the fire without heeding Gaga, and looked down at its brightness. Still her ears were alert to catch some violence below; and as there was none her heart sank once more. Toby was gone. She had dismissed him and he had gone. She was more forlornly alone than ever. If Gaga had not been with her she must have sought relief in some physical effort, some vehement thumping of the mantelpiece and a burst into wild crying. The repression which Sally was forced to exercise tortured her. The agony she suffered was almost unbearable. Her mouth was stretched in a horrible grimace, so poignant was her feeling.

"I.... I'd like something hot," Gaga proceeded, in innocence. "Some ... some cocoa ... or...."

"I'll get you some." It was with passionate exasperation that Sally spoke; but she was thankful to know that she might leave him for a few minutes. The room seemed to stifle her. She plunged to the door, walking past Gaga with her head averted, so that he might not see her face. The stairs were cold, and she was upon the ground floor in an instant. A servant, called from below, came slowly to receive instructions; but there was no cocoa in the house. Nothing? No coffee? Nothing of the kind was available. Still thankful for the opportunity of turning her mind to details, Sally hurried upstairs again. Gaga was already half-undressed, and stood in front of the fire folding his coat. His thinness was grotesque in the bright light of the gas.

"Oh dear!" he cried. "I wanted it."

"All the shops'll be shut now," declared Sally.

Gaga thought for a moment, his face drawn. He was forced to sit down upon the edge of the bed.

"I.... I used ... used to have cocoa in my ... my study," he said.

"I'll look." Sally went down to the half-landing and into the small room which Gaga had always used for evening work before his marriage. It was quite tiny, and there was a gas fire there, and an armchair, and above the fireplace were some small shelves with a few books upon them. Upon other shelves were many tins and packets and bottles, most of them containing preparations handled by the firm in which Gaga had an interest. Strange: she had not had to trouble at all about that! The room was very cold, and Sally shivered as she stood examining the contents of the shelves. The tins and packets were all in confusion, large and small jostling one another; and many had their descriptive labels turned to the wall. Sally read upon some of them words the meaning of which she could not understand. Nearly all of them were chemicals relating to the enrichment of soil or to the general improvement of farm produce. Some were quite tiny, with little crystals in them. Others were large, and still within wrappings. She hurriedly read the lettering, darted away to the cupboard, back again to the shelves, and once more to the cupboard. Here there was a litter of papers also, for Gaga was temperamentally fussy and untidy, and everything he owned was in disorder. She put her hand upon a cocoa-tin. It contained white pellets which looked like rice. There was another tin, and this was half-full of cocoa. She gave a cry of satisfaction. And then, as she replaced the lid of this tin she saw another; straight before her eyes; and something made her stop as if she had been paralysed. Fascinated, she read: "POISON: This preparation of Sheep Dip contains Arsenic." There followed some particulars, of which she caught only the word "grains." Poison! Sally cautiously took the tin in her hand, reading again more carefully the words printed upon the label. Funny thing to have in the house, she thought.... Poison. She replaced the tin upon the cupboard shelf, and carried the cocoa to Gaga.

"That cocoa?" she demanded. "It's all mixed up with poison and stuff. Don't want to kill you."

Gaga, by this time in bed, looked at the cocoa, and proclaimed its reality.

"Yes ... that's ... co ... cocoa," he stammered.

There was a pause of some minutes while the cocoa was mixed; and they both drank it slowly, Sally conscious, as its warmth stole through her body, that she was less extremely unhappy than she had been. She felt a little better. She even kissed Gaga in wishing him goodnight, and received his eager kisses in return without flinching. At last she too went to her bed in the adjoining room, and undressed and lay down in the darkness. From where she lay Sally could hear Gaga moving, and could see the glimmer of the light in his room which would burn until the morning. And as she lay there all her tragic thoughts came flooding back with the intensity of a nightmare. The horrors, for a short time repelled, were stronger than ever. She was tensely awake. Every word exchanged between Toby and herself came ringing into her head. She was aghast at the stupidity, the cruel and brutal stupidity, of her lover. He her lover! Love! why he didn't know what love meant! He would take everything she had to give; and when he was asked to stand by her Toby would repudiate her claim upon him. She was filled with vicious hatred at his betrayal. That was what men were! That was what they did! Shirkers! They were all like that, except when they were ridiculous half-men like Gaga. What was she to do? What could she do? Her brain became very clear and active. It was working with painful alertness, so rapidly that she often did not reach the end of one channel before she was embarked upon another. Toby was hopeless. She must act by herself. And what could she do?

Supposing she could do nothing? Disgrace, failure.... She was frightened. Better anything than disclosure so ignominious. She thought of Gaga: very well, there was still time. He would be better soon, and once he was better she could easily persuade him that he was the father of her baby. That was the simplest plan, and one which had been so much taken for granted that she had not taken it sufficiently into account as the only safe course. Gaga could be deceived because he had no suspicion of all that went on in her mind, or of anything that had happened in her life. He would soon be better, and when once they were united he would be wholly in Sally's hands. Not yet, though. He must get well. A quick rush of relief came to her as a reassurance. She could have laughed at her own panic. Of course Gaga was the solution. He could be made to believe almost anything. But supposing ... supposing that he would always be ill? Then indeed she would be better dead. Dead? But how could she die? She might long for death; but death was not an oblivion that could be called up at will. Sally pondered upon the possibilities.

The word "POISON" returned to her memory. Quickly there followed the word "arsenic." Arsenic: what did she recall? Suddenly Sally remembered that evening long ago when she had found her mother reading an account of the Seddon trial. What had Seddon done? All the details came crowding to her attention. He had given poison in food ... in food. And Miss ... what was her name? Same as old Perce's— Barrow. Seddon had given Miss Barrow arsenic. It had made her sick. Sally shuddered. She did not want to be sick. She had had enough of sickness in these past few weeks. To her sickness was the abomination of disease.

A terrible shock ran through Sally's body. She lay panting, her heart seeming to throb from her temples to her feet. Miss Barrow had been constantly sick through taking arsenic, and they had only found it out.... Gaga.... Sally's face grew violently hot. She could not breathe. She sat feverishly up in bed, staring wildly. An idea had occurred to her so monstrous that she was stricken with a sense of guilt and self-horror such as she had never known.

xviii

All that night Sally dwelt with her terrible temptation. The more she shrank from it the more stealthily it returned to her, like the slow fingers of an incoming tide. So many circumstances gave colour to her belief that the poison could be given without discovery that Sally found every detail too easy to conceive. Gaga would be sick again and again, would weaken, would.... Always her imagination refused to complete the story. She covered her face with her hands and sought frantically to hide from this loathsome whisper that pressed temptation upon her. Ill and frightened, she lay turning into every posture of defiance and weakness and irresolution, until the daylight was fully come; and then Gaga's voice called feebly from the next room, and she must rise to tend him with something of the guilt of a murderess oppressing her and causing her during the whole talk to keep her face turned away.

But she found in the interview strength enough for the moment to baffle temptation. To know that Gaga lay helpless there before her—hardly moulded into recognisable form by the clinging bedclothes—was a reinforcement to Sally's good will. His position appealed to the pity she felt—the pity and the contempt. He was so thin and weak, so exceedingly fragile, that Sally could not deliberately have hurt him. Instead, she was bent upon his salvation.

"Bertram," she said. "We must get away to-day. This morning. D'you see? We must."

"O-o-oh!" groaned Gaga, in unformulated opposition.

"We must. We'll go to Penterby this morning."

"But my dear!" it was a long wailing cry, like that of an old woman.

"We've got to go. Got to go. I'll get everything ready. You shan't have to worry about anything at all."

"Sal-ly!" Again Gaga wailed. He tried to pull her down to him, gently and coaxingly. In a sort of hysteria, Sally jerked herself free, looking steadily away. Her mouth was open, and brooding resolve was in her eyes. She was not tragic; she was in confusion, set only upon a single purpose, and otherwise passively in distress. Obstinately she repulsed him.

"It's no good talking. We must go. I'm ill, as well as you. The doctor says we must both go away. At once." She was so resolute that Gaga could not resist her. He lay quite still, and for that reason she was forced to look down at him. To Sally's surprise there was upon Gaga's face an expression of such sweetness that she was almost touched. He loved her. "There!" she murmured, as if to a baby; and bent and kissed him. Gaga kissed her several times in return and continued to watch her, still with that strange expression of kindness that was almost worship. He stirred at last.

"I'll get up," he said. "I'll get up now. It's a ... it's a fine idea. We'll catch the morning train, if we hurry. We'll be ... be there in time for lunch."

Sally was in such a whirl of thankfulness that she flew to her dressing and packing. She and Gaga were both downstairs and at breakfast within half-an-hour, seated at the big dining-table, and looking very small in that great room. As they sat, Gaga was so happy that he repented of his promise to go away, and wanted to remain at ease in such pleasant circumstances. He began to think of reasons why they should not go away at all. He spoke with regret of the new flat, of their preparations ... even of the business. But already Sally was upon her feet. A few minutes later she was telephoning to Miss Summers explaining the sudden change of situation; and then immediately began to pack. It was not a difficult task. She herself had few things to take away. Presently Gaga joined idly in the work; and the two of them neatly folded his clothes and slipped into his dressing-case the articles he was bound to need while they were away.

"My medicine!" exclaimed Gaga, clutching at an excuse.

"Got enough for to-day; and I've got the prescription." Sally was grim. She was more—she was driven by instinct. It was essential that they should go immediately. For one thing Toby might return, and any thought of Toby was so horrible to her at this moment, when her first hatred was giving way to uncontrollable longing for him, that it was like a scourge. And for another thing Sally was in terror of the nightmare temptation. She was fighting against that with all the strength that remained. Even now, if she looked at Gaga, she shuddered deeply.

"What's the time?" called Gaga.

"Miriam ... telephone for a cab!" Sally was simultaneously giving instructions to a servant. She went to a desk in which she kept money, and found that she had very little remaining. "Bert, got any money? Well, your cheque book?"

"In the study."

It was a fatal word, so carelessly spoken, but like a blow in its sharp revival of something that was being suppressed. Sally hurried to the door of her bedroom. As suddenly, she stopped dead. The study! In a wave all her memory of the previous night's wicked temptation came back to her. It was only with a great effort that she went further. More than a moment passed in a silent struggle. Almost blindly, she entered the study, and its chill atmosphere was tomb-like in its effect upon her. Again Sally shuddered. Groping, she found Gaga's cheque book, and turned again to the door. The walls of the tiny room seemed to rise forbiddingly around her, to come closer, to begin to topple over as if in ruin. Sally gasped for breath. She cowered. Everything became dark.... A long time passed before she was again conscious. Clasping the cheque book, Sally felt her way unsteadily, with her eyes closed, until she stood upon the threshold. She was breathing slowly and deeply, and she could see nothing. And at last, fighting still, but incapable of conquering the stronger influence which was being exercised upon her will, she went back into the room, and stood there with her face towards the cupboard. Quietly, as if on tiptoe, she passed in a dream to the cupboard and unfastened it, and without ever once looking about among the other contents of the shelf put her hand upon the fatal tin which she had found while looking for Gaga's cocoa. With this tin in her hand she hastened back to her room, closing the door as silently as she had opened it. The tin was quickly laid among her clothes, right in the corner of her dressing-case, hidden from any prying eye. Then Sally straightened herself, listened and bent down again to fasten the bag. Within ten minutes she and Gaga were out of the house, sitting in a taxi on their way to Victoria Station. Sally pressed herself back in the corner of the cab, not touching Gaga, so that nobody should see her; and at the station she was on fire until they were settled in the railway carriage and the train was slipping gently out from the platform. Then at last she sighed deeply, as if with relief, and the corners of her mouth drooped until she looked like a little girl who was going to cry. The houses became blurred.

xix

Gaga and Sally reached Penterby in a very different mood and a very different state of health from that which had marked their arrival on the previous visit. The station, with its confusing platforms and connecting bridges, was by now familiar to Sally, and she was able to turn at once to a porter and give him instructions. Whereas before they had walked the short distance between the station and the hotel they were now forced to take an open, horse-drawn, cab. It stood waiting when they reached the small station yard, the horse still nibbling feebly at dropped oats upon the paving and with its breath blowing them farther away. The few little cottages near the station were passed in an instant, and the old-fashioned main street of Penterby, reached after a short run between a hedge upon one side and a tall wooden paling upon the other, was about them. Above, the sky was brilliantly blue. In front the houses rose towards the hill-top as of old. There was peace here, if Sally could find it. And she could see the bridge, and the ivy-covered hotel, and the gold-lettered board. She sat as if crushed in her seat in the cab, staring out at the hotel with an expression of strain and eagerness. Beside her Gaga, tired by the journey, yawned behind his long hand, his hat tilted over his eyes, and his mouth always a little open. It was a strange return, and Sally had ado to preserve any lightness of step and tone as she jumped down from the cab and went into the hotel. As before, she noticed the silence and emptiness of the small bar, and the room beyond; and as she tapped loudly Mrs. Tennant came from another room. This time it was Sally who took charge of everything. Gaga drooped in the background, a feeble figure. But he gathered strength to smile at Mrs. Tennant and to greet her.

"I'm not well, Mrs. Tennant," he said. "I've come to get ... get ... get well. My wife's ill, too. You ... you must be very kind to us."

"My!" exclaimed Mrs. Tennant, in a fat voice of concern. Her swollen lips were parted in dismay. "But you both look so bad! Of course: you can have the same room you had before. Come up!"

She led the way. Sally again caught a glimpse of the drawing-room carpet in its brilliant mixture of reds and blues and yellows, and was immediately afterwards drawn into the old dark bedroom opening upon the glass-covered balcony. She stood in dismay, suddenly regretful that they had come to be stifled there.

"Can we have some lunch?" she asked. "My husband's...."

"Of course." Mrs. Tennant's geniality was benignant. But in her eyes there remained that unappeasable caution which Sally had previously noticed. "At once."

Sally slipped out of the room with her. They stood in the narrow drab passage—two black-clothed figures notably contrasted in age and development. Mrs. Tennant was so stout, and Sally so slim, that the difference between them was emphasised by the similarity of clothing.

"My husband's mother's dead. He was awfully fond of her. He's been ill ever since, and the doctor said he'd better come away."

"You're ill yourself, you know, Mrs. Merrick," exclaimed Mrs. Tennant.

"I've been nursing him a month—night and day. He's not strong. We'd barely got back when she died. What with his illness, and the business—it's been terrible!"

Sally was watching Mrs. Tennant—she did not know why. She felt defensive. All was the result of her own position and the dreadful knowledge which she had of her last night's temptation. She looked like a young girl, but so pale and hollow-eyed that she would have aroused pity in any woman of experience.

"But it's you. I know Mr. Merrick. I've often seen him queer. But you're so changed. When you were here before...."

"I know. I'm ill."

"I said to my sister how strong and bright you were. We both thought you'd make a—well, a new man of Mr. Merrick."

"It's only his mother's dying like that. He was worried about her, and then she died; and he just went to pieces. He had to be put to bed at once. I'll put him to bed again as soon as we've had something to eat. He's so weak. It's the change he wants, and the fresh air."

"And you too, my dear." Mrs. Tennant seemed really to be kind.

"When he's asleep I'll go for a walk. I'll soon be well." Sally was reassuring; but she was made aware of her own weakness by having had attention drawn to the appearance of it.

They parted with smiles. Sally made as if to re-enter the bedroom; but, instead, she went through the drawing-room and on to the balcony. The river was running swiftly up-stream, so that the thick mud was hidden. Back along its course came little floating masses of collected material, like miniature islands in progress up and down the river. Sally stood watching one of these masses, until it grew indistinct as the result of her intentness. The sun was making the houses beyond the river glitter anew, and the whole town was beautified in its light. A feeling of great misery seized Sally. She stared down at the discoloured stream, and her eyes filled with tears. She was again consumed with a sense of loneliness; and a faint horror of the returning tide caused her to break once again from her contemplation, to walk back through the drawing-room, and to rejoin Gaga. He was sitting upon the bed, regarding with a vacant expression the two dressing-cases which had been brought up to the room and which stood together against the wall. The room was cold and dark. Sally impulsively went to the French windows opening upon the balcony and drew back the curtains.

"There now," she said. "You're going to get better. You can see the sun."

Gaga smiled gently. Sally came back to him and stood with her hand ruffling his thin hair. She too smiled, but with abstraction. She was numbed by illness and horror and the journey and her vision of the dirty merciless water.

xx

When they had eaten their lunch, Sally helped Gaga to undress and left him in bed with the curtains again closed and the bedroom, thus darkened, smelling close and dank, as if it were the haunt of blackbeetles. When the curtains were drawn the whole room faded to a uniformity of grey-brown, and the pictures and ornaments became dim shadows, and the mirror upon the dressing-table took upon itself a mysterious air, as though in its depths one might read something of the hidden future. All was sunk in a sorrowful gloom, and the barely-outlined recumbent figure of Gaga might have been that of a dead man. Upon tiptoe, Sally stole quietly from the room. For a little while she sat alone over a fire which had been lighted in the drawing-room; but the evening was beginning to cast darkness over everything; and in the west the last hot reflections of the sun were cast upon two or three casual clouds. Sally therefore rose, and took her hat and coat, which were lying near the piano. As it was the middle of the week, and in autumn, the hotel was almost empty, and would not be occupied with any visitors for two or three more days. It was a dull place once the sun had set. For a moment Sally hesitated in putting on her hat; but at last she ventured forth, and was out in the greying street, and upon the bridge across the river. The water, as she hurried by, ran silently below, blackened and threatening, and as there would be no moon the night was coming with great darkness. Over the bridge Sally noticed the early lights in the post office, and a few street lamps. One road ran a little way up the hill and was immediately checked by houses. Another turned off to the north-west, and it was here that she would find a shop at which she could leave the prescription for Gaga's medicine. Once she had performed her task Sally walked briskly on until she came to the end of the houses and into a road to the edges of which trees grew and grass came irregularly running. Beneath the trees darkness already obliterated all shape, and the fringes of the wood were so bare of leafage that she could already look up to the grey sky between the boughs and their filmy branches. No vehicles passed. She was alone upon this broad road, with nothing upon either hand but unexplored depths of shadow and silence. Every now and then a stationary light spotted the dusk. She was appalled by her loneliness.

Quickly as she had walked away from Penterby, Sally returned to the town with even greater speed, warmed by the exercise, but chilled by her thoughts and perplexities. When she was alone, and so hemmed in by sinister darkness, Sally was brought quickly back to her forebodings. She remembered the solitary figure which she had left, and thought of Gaga was shrinking. Of Toby she could only find herself thinking with anger. Yet it was not wholly anger, for she was also afraid and filled with longing. Her anger was even obliterated by her love, so much did she adore Toby's strength. His cruelty, his brutal indifference, were spurs to her unreasoning affection. Whatever Toby might do, Sally loved him. The love which she had believed herself indignantly to have cast out was still paramount. Finally, in all her fleeting considerations of the moment and the future, she could not ignore the baby which was coming. She had no thought of it other than fear and loathing. Not yet had desire for a child created in her mind a new longing. If she could have killed it she would have done so; and she was prevented from contemplating this possibility only by the ignorance which inexperience and friendlessness imposed upon her. Sally was awed and terrified by the gloom which gathered in her heart and about her. She sped onwards until she reached the bridge, and here for several minutes she uncontrollably paused. All was now black, and the tide had turned. Already the water was flowing to the sea, and she could imagine the coagulated masses vaguely swirling beneath her, borne unresisting upon the outgoing tide. The hotel was in darkness, excepting for the room beneath the balcony where the walls descended straight to the water and the mud. Here there was a dim light. All above was sombre until she reached in her steady upward glance the sky's faint background and saw its unfathomable arch of grey.

The bar of the hotel was empty. Unperceived, Sally went upstairs and into the bedroom where Gaga lay. She closed the door behind her and switched on the electric light. To her surprise Gaga was lying on his side, and his face was turned towards her.

"You awake?" she whispered. At his soft sound of greeting she went forward and sat upon the bed. "It's half-past-four," Sally continued. "Like some tea? Going to get up again?"

"I.... I'm so tired," murmured Gaga. He had taken her hand, and held it to his cheek, so that Sally had to lean forward. In this mood he was so like a child that Sally's heart softened. She found him pathetic, and her own strength was emphasised by his weakness.

"Better stay in bed," she said.

"But you? Aren't you ... aren't you lonely?"

"Mm. Nobody here. Nothing to do. I been for a walk and got frightened."

"I'll get up. Yes, I will. After tea we'll walk along that av ... avenue. In the moonlight. Like your song."

"There's no moon up yet," Sally told him, not moving. "You stay where you are. Stay nice and warm in bed. I shall be all right. I'll go for a walk along the avenue by myself."

"And be f ... frightened again."

"Shan't wait to be frightened," Sally said. "See me dart back!"

Gaga fondled her hand and reached for the other one, which she patiently yielded.

"You ... you're so nice," he murmured. "So good to me."

"I? Good?" Sally's shoulders were hoisted. She almost withdrew her hands.

"Yes. But Sally.... I...." He was overcome, and could not proceed. Tears had started to his eyes. "I haven't been sleeping. I've been thinking. Last night...."

"Last night!" Sally convulsively jerked her hands away, and as quickly restored them.

"You thought I'd ... I'd ... been ... been spying."

"Of course you weren't. I was ill. I was a beast."

"Sally, I never did. You ... you have a lot.... I've been thinking ... a lot to put up with. Marrying a ... a sick man; and you...."

Sally could not bear him to talk thus. She freed herself, and rose.

"Here's a lot of talk!" she protested. "You get well, old son. Then we'll see."

Gaga did not say anything for a moment. At last he spoke again.

"Sally, would you ... would you mind very much if I did ... didn't get well?" he asked.

"Course I should!" But Sally was filled with alarm at this conversation. She turned upon Gaga, but she could not meet his soft eyes. "Here, you're talking silly!"

"Sally.... I.... I wasn't spying," said Gaga, slowly. "But I.... I did see a man at the gate last night."

Sally clutched the back of a chair. For a moment she thought she must be going to faint. Then, with a tremendous effort, she controlled herself.

"What d'you mean?" she demanded.

"Behind you. With you."

"Never!"

Gaga continued to regard her. His smile was no longer visible. She only noticed that he was paler, that his nostrils were pinched and his eyes dark.

"I wish you'd tell me the truth," he said.

"I tell you there was nobody with me," lied Sally. "Nobody. There may have been a man behind me. I did get a bit of a start. Somebody came out of a gate. I didn't notice."

"Sally.... I.... I heard him call you 'Sally.'"

She was stricken with terror at his quietness.

"Nobody called me Sally!" she cried. "I don't know anybody."

Gaga sighed, and his head fell sideways, so that he no longer looked at her. They spoke no more. She believed that he knew she had been lying; but she had been caught unawares, and could not retract her assertions. Without a further word she began to prepare a basin of water, and washed herself. Then she went to ask that tea might be brought to the bedroom. They drank the tea in silence, both very grave. When they had finished, Sally took the tray to the end of the passage, where there was a projecting ledge, and then returned to the room.

"Shall I go and sing to you?" she asked.

"Not ... not now. Go for your wa ... walk. I shan't have any dinner. I'll just have a cup of cocoa."

Cocoa! Sally was transfixed.

"Oh, not cocoa!" she cried. "Not cocoa!" It was a desperate appeal. It came from the depths of her heart. She had been alarmed at his speech. She had been afraid of what he might do. But more than all she was afraid of the horrible voice that had followed fear with its imaginings of the means to her own salvation. At his further silence, she went quickly out of the room and out of the hotel. She walked at a rapid pace along the avenue, where others also were walking, as it was a favourite promenade; and she found herself shaking with emotion as the result of the disclosure which Gaga had made. He knew. He knew. What did he know? And what would he do? Sally laughed hysterically. Oh, let him do it soon! It was suspense that she could not bear. It was the ghastly sense of muddle and falsehood that was oppressing her now. Death—punishment—these were things of indifference. It was the fear of either that made her torture. To know the worst, to face it, to suffer for all she had done that was wrong, would satisfy her. But to be kept in this horrible suspense much longer would send her mad. Why had she not told Gaga the truth? She began hysterically to condemn herself. She should have told him the truth. She should have said that Toby was an old lover, jealous, angry, threatening. Now she could not tell any such tale, because she had denied that a man had used her name. To confess would make him disbelieve anything she ever said. Sally shrugged. He did not believe her now. He would never believe her. Once he was well he would find out everything. He would suspect her. He would persecute her with suspicions. He would suspect that she was going to have a baby. He would suspect ... he would know....

Creeping, creeping into Sally's mind came temptation. She walked more swiftly until she reached a part of the road which bordered the river. The water was less muddy here. The river looked in this aspect like a big pool of liquid lead. It was less sinister. It carried to her heart no sense of horror. She turned and began to walk back, meeting every now and then a couple of pedestrians, or little knots of people, or solitary individuals like herself, who strolled to and fro along the broad avenue. But it was very dark, and she could not well see the faces of those who passed, except when they were in the neighbourhood of a light. She did not recognise anybody; and when she came once more to the bridge she did not tarry, but walked straight across it. Upon the face of the river were reflected the lights of the hotel, for the balcony was now faintly illumined, and she could see that the curtains had been drawn at the corner windows, although not elsewhere. Again unperceived, she made her way upstairs and into the drawing-room, where she removed her coat and hat and seated herself at the piano.

xxi

But Sally did not stay at the piano. She was restless and apprehensive. She did not dare to strike a note, in case Gaga should be asleep. And she could not go into the bedroom. She tried to do so, but she so shrank from meeting Gaga after their talk that every impulse held her faltering here. Instead, Sally went through the door which led from the drawing-room to the balcony. Only one light was burning, at the farther end, and this cast such a tiny ray that it threw up the shadows of no more than a single enamelled iron table and wicker chair. For the rest, everything was in a monotonous grey twilight, bereft of all incidental colourings and of all significance. The electric bulb was grimed with age and the action of the air, and the light was quite yellow, as that from an oil lamp would have been. The matting with which the floor of the balcony was covered was in shadow. Through the windows Sally could see only a blackness in which the water and the opposite bank and the buildings farther away were all obscured. She went towards the light, and sat here in an armchair, staring straight before her, and thinking the one word ... poison ... poison ... poison.

She must have been sitting upon the balcony for several minutes in this state approaching stupor, when she heard a faint sound. It was like the brushing of leaves against a passing body. Her heart quickened, and she looked quickly towards the darker end of the balcony, near the door leading to the drawing-room. She could see nothing at all, but her nerves did not relax their tenseness. She could see nothing; but she felt that something—somebody was there, watching her. Somebody—whom could it be? Sally knew how deserted the bar was, how easy it would be for a man to slip up the stairs without being seen. She was defenceless. If she had been well, she would have gone straight along the balcony, to discover the cause of her alarm; but she was ill, and she shrank back in her chair, watching the pulsing dimness.

Sally knew that there were only two people who could wish her harm—Gaga and Toby. If Gaga had gone out of his bedroom by the inner door he might have come round through the drawing-room, and might be standing there in the darkness. He might have gone away again. He might have found the poison. In a passion of fear, she rose. If it was Gaga, she would soon confront him. She would satisfy herself of his presence in the bedroom. She took two steps, and then stopped, her heart frantically beating. There was somebody there.

"Sally," came a sharp whisper. "Sally. Don't be afraid."

It was Toby, hidden still from sight, but waiting there at the dark end of the balcony.

xxii

Sally's eyes flew instantly to the window of the bedroom. All there was dark. She could not tell if the blinds were drawn or not. She no longer dreaded Toby: she too violently desired to see him, to be in his arms and saved from her nightmare thoughts by a moment's oblivion.

"Hush!" she whispered, and went silently along the balcony. "What d'you want?"

"I want you." Toby's voice came hissing into her ear, and she saw him at last. He was standing, a burly figure, in the shadow of a screen, and remained quite still, hidden.

"What did you come for? How did you get here?"

"Went to your house. Frightened 'em." Toby laughed grimly. "Thought you'd got away, didn't you? Well, here I am." His tone became suddenly ferocious. "See?"

"You can't ... we can't talk. My husband's there—in that room. He'll hear. He saw you last night."

"I got to see you," Toby whispered, obstinately. "See? I mean to say, I got to know what you're going to do."

Sally gave a contemptuous laugh. So he had followed her for that!

"Well, I'm well rid of you," she answered. "I see what you are."

"Oh, you do, do you...." said Toby. He gripped her arm. "Not so much of that, Sal. D'you see? I won't have it. You belong to me."

"I don't!" But Sally was only waiting for his fierce embrace, and longing for it. "I don't like you. I don't want you. I've had enough. You let me down."

Toby started. His voice became thick with anger.

"My Christ! Who let anybody down? What did you do to me? Eh? You married this chap. You did it for yourself. Let you down, do I? Oh, I'm a good mind to kill you, Sal."

Sally shivered. She knew he might do it. He could do it. It was his nature. But she answered him defiantly, sneeringly.

"Yes, if you want to be hung for it."

Toby was holding her so that her arms were being bruised. He pulled her towards him, and kissed her again and again. He was crushing her.

"See?" he said. "That's how you belong to me."

"Well, what about it?" panted Sally. "Let me go.... Just because you're strong."

"You're coming off with me. See? Now."

"I'm not." She was equally determined.

"Now. Can you get your hat?"

"I'm not," repeated Sally.

Toby swung her off her feet with one arm.

"See?" he announced again. "That's what."

"Go on, that's all you can do," answered Sally, savagely. "You clear off. I've had enough of it." She dived suddenly, and escaped from him. She was a few steps away, and Toby was in pursuit. As he followed, he kicked against one of the little iron tables, which he had not seen in the half-light, and sent it crashing to the floor. Amid their silence it made a hideous noise. Sally drew herself upright, terrified into rigidity. This was the finish—the finish. It was all over now. She was beaten. She.... And as she stared she saw that the French window of the bedroom was open—had been open, perhaps, all the time,—and that Gaga was standing there, as if he had overheard all that they had said.

"Sally!" he cried in a sharp voice of alarm. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

Gaga came leaping out upon the balcony as Toby stumbled on towards Sally. The two men were sharply in conflict, and Gaga's arm was raised. She could see it even in the shadow—the raised arm, and the impact of the two bodies. Gaga was in his sleeping-suit, spectral in his gauntness and his pallor. Maddened, Toby swept his enemy aside with one violent blow that would have killed the strongest man. Gaga went down, his head and body thrown with great force against the brick wall of the hotel, and sliding to the ground with such momentum that there was a further concussion.

"Toby!" shrieked Sally. "Toby! You've killed him!"

Gaga lay in the shadow, quite motionless, a horrible twisted body without life. And the two others stood panting in the twilight, staring down at his ghastly upturned face. Toby was as if paralysed by the sight, his hand sleepily raised to his brow.

A voice sounded from downstairs.

"Did you call, Mrs. Merrick?" And then ascending steps followed.

Sally made a frantic gesture.

"Get out!" she cried. "Quick. They're coming. They'll find you. He's dead. Get out!" She waved to the windows.

With one glance round, and with fear at his heels, Toby ran to the side of the balcony, pulled aside one of the windows, and climbed out into the darkness. Sally saw him no more. She was only aware that something terrible happened, and that he missed his footing and plunged downwards towards the running water and the sickening mud. Then, as she convulsively jerked the window close again, she was overcome with deadly faintness, and herself fell upon the matting, striking her head as she fell, and losing consciousness.