ii

She was not, morally, being a very good girl; for her mother was still in the hospital, and she and Toby were taking risks. So far there had been no discovery; but they were getting bolder, and only the day before going to Madame Gala's, when his aunt had been out for the afternoon and evening, Toby had had Sally to tea in his aunt's room, and they had sat together over a good fire, and had silently made love to each other for hours. The more love-making they had, the more they wanted, and Sally had been living all the week for the time she spent with Toby. But her mother would be coming home soon, even though she would be unable to work; and both knew that the wild ecstasy would end with her return. It was that, probably, which made them less careful, or, if not less careful, at any rate less cautious in the use of their opportunity. Sally had a dread, which she would not face, and if Toby had any dread he never told her. For all her feeling of intimacy with him, Sally never reached below his manner and his strength; and her ignorance of him it was that gave the whole relation its charm for her. He was mysterious, a compelling strength outside her, a strange man who responded to all her wishes and who loved her as she wished to be loved—brutally and dominatingly. She was dazzled and infatuated. But already, in her first days with Madame Gala, she had recovered sufficient of her old coolness to be set upon definite personal success. This was her strongest impulse. Her love was outside it, a gratification now, and not a torment. She had no sense whatever of wrong-doing; only of hostility to her mother because her mother's return would interrupt the tenour of her life. Once only she said to Toby, secure in her trust of his love and care: "Toby ... if I have a baby, you'll ... you'll marry me, won't you?" And Toby gave her the necessary promise in obvious good faith. Neither, therefore, troubled about the future. They were both too anxious to live only in the exhilarating present.

But at last Mrs. Minto returned, and by that time Sally was living upon money borrowed from Mrs. Perce, her one friend and protector. Mrs. Minto could not work. She wrote to Aunt Emmy, and Aunt Emmy helped her from her prizewinnings, and for several weeks they were thus enabled to stave off want. Once Mrs. Minto was back at home the old order of parsimony was revived, and it cost them very little to keep life going on from day to day. Sally's seven shillings a week helped. And at last Mrs. Minto was allowed to go out, and Mrs. Roberson took her back. Slowly, half-starving, they managed to exist. Sally still had her evenings with Toby, with their glory dimmed; and as the weeks went on she knew that she was safe from the causes of her dread, and carried herself jauntily, and she began to earn a little extra money by working in the evenings for Miss Jubb. This meant that she saw Toby less often, and Toby now had a man friend from the works where he was employed, and was sometimes with this man Jackson. Sally had her seventeenth birthday: her figure had improved, and so had her appearance. She was still meagre, because she had not enough to eat; but some compensation of Nature allowed her to maintain her health and to mature.

One day, when she had gone to practise upon Mrs. Perce's piano, as she had not done all the time they had been away from the flat, Sally attracted Mrs. Perce's attention by singing unusually well. Her friend listened; and then looked into the room.

"What's that you're singing?" she demanded. "Suits you. You'll never be able to play the piano, Sally, because you'd have to practise every day for hours to do that; but you've got a big voice for your body. I suppose your lungs are good. Ever heard me sing? It's like a baby crying. But that song 'The Love Path' suits you. You might do something with your voice. Not much, I expect; but something. You just try and get hold of somebody who knows about such things. Might do a turn on the Halls. You never know. If I come across anybody I'll ask them; but I don't see many people now, and what I do are all in the 'public' line. It's worth thinking about, for a girl like you, with your way to make. Unless you marry, of course; and you say you're not going to do that in a hurry. So there you are. Make the most of yourself, I say; and let the Devil go hang himself if he's a mind to it."

Sally, who had never thought of such a thing, promised. For a time she was flattered by the vision of singing to audiences. But that soon faded. She met nobody outside Madame's, except for one or two young men who spoke to her on the way home; and so she kept to her sewing and machining for Miss Jubb. It pleased her to be able to tell Toby, who, however, frowned, and did not seem pleased.

"Seems to me you're always thinking you'll do something wonderful," he said sourly. "Doesn't seem to come to much, as fur as I can see."

"Oh, doesn't it!" cried Sally. She shook herself free from him, and marched off in anger. And Toby did not follow. It was a tiff. By the next evening both were contrite, and the matter was never spoken of again. All the same, Sally remembered it. She remembered it the more unforgivingly because Toby's remark had been true. Nothing so far had happened to prove definitely that her confidence in exceptional powers was justified. He was jealous of her! Sally laughed almost scornfully. Fancy a big fellow like Toby being jealous of a little thing like her. Men! They were all alike. All right as long as they were playing first fiddle! That was it: Toby didn't want her to have a chance at all. He wanted her always to be number two. Sally shook her head obstinately.

"All right, Master Toby!" she said to herself. There was no more in it than that—a momentary revolt;—but once the notion had arisen it began to revolve in her mind. She could not remember if she had ever told Toby of her plan to be a successful dressmaker; but what would he say to that? Would he like his wife to make money, and to have real ladies coming to her as they did to Madam? It seemed from this that he would not. He preferred to be top dog. Sally was to be nothing upon her own account—merely to fetch and carry, and do what she was told, and husband his paltry little earnings. He'd rather be poor than owe anything to his wife, in case she became bigger than himself. Was that it? Was that Master Toby's idea? If so, it was not Sally's. She suddenly understood that Toby thought of her as his wife, as his chattel; and that she had never ceased, except in the passionate excitement of their early relations, to think of herself as one who belonged to herself and was going to make some sort of life for herself. This came as a shock to Sally. She had never thought of it before. She was beginning to grow up. From that time she first began to criticise Toby. Until then he had been the burly man she loved. Her thoughts of him, as her love for him, had been merely physical. She was now to search more deeply into the needs of life, still crudely, but examiningly. It was not enough, then, to love a man if you were going to have something else to do in life besides love him. The idea was new. It puzzled her. It was something outside the novelettes she had read, and outside her own precocious thoughts. Love was love—all knew that. She loved Toby; she had given herself to him; they were practically married; and now it appeared that something was wrong somewhere. Toby did not want her to be Sally: he wanted her to be just a sort of moon-Toby. Another girl would have wanted nothing better. Sally told herself that she was different. She went out by herself, one evening, instead of working; and walked up to Highgate. And as she went up the hill she sang to herself the ballad "The Love Path." It began:

and she could play the simple accompaniment to it with very few mistakes. She remembered Mrs. Perce's words. What if she could do something with her voice? Did she sing well? She allowed herself to glimpse another glorious future.

In the middle of the walk Sally stopped dead.

"Oh, doesn't it...." she said aloud. "Well, we'll just see. We'll just see about it. That's all." And having as it were made her formal protest she resumed the journey, and arrived home tired out, ready for bed; and before she had been in bed more than two minutes she was fast asleep, dreaming of motor cars and footmen standing on the pavement with fur rugs in their hands. In her dream she was alone in the cars. Even the chauffeur had no smallest resemblance to Toby. And yet she still loved him with all her heart, and when she was with him she felt that she extraordinarily belonged to him. Love had again at last encountered ambition, and battle was joined.