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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.