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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.