of their poor and
pompously-displayed schemes for economical entertainment. Sally's teeth
showed like the teeth of a cat, very small and sharp, emblems of her
nature. Conceit took firmer root in her heart because of her contempt
for May and her inevitable suppressions of pain and resentment in face
of neglect, as well as her suppressions of knowledge gained by a mental
process so quick that May could never have had the smallest notion of
it. Sally became secret, and her determination was made more emphatic.
She began to study her face, and her body. One day her mother found her
naked in front of a mirror, twisting herself so that she could see the
poise of her figure. It was a pretty figure, if underdeveloped, and from
that time of thorough examination onwards Sally never had the smallest
doubt of her own attractiveness and its principal constituents. Only her
face was wrong, she felt with bitter chagrin; her face and her hair. If
her face were fatter and less freckled, and if her hair were not so
sandy and pale, she would be pretty. Really pretty. Pretty enough to
make a man go silly. Well, such things could be cured, couldn't they?
Or, if not cured, then at least improved.... That was a notion that
dwelt constantly in Sally's thoughts.

v

The point was, that she must have actual experience in rousing men. It
was not that she had determined upon marriage as a way out of her
present difficulties. At the back of her mind, perhaps, was always the
knowledge that she must get a man to work for her; but this never became
an obsession. She was simply a growing girl, hungry for experience, and
at the outset hampered by circumstance. Unless something happened to
her, Sally was doomed to poverty and suffering. Therefore, full of raw
confidence, she was determined that she should be the heroine of her own
romance. Her impulse was not to give, but to take. She did not long to
be the loving help of a good man, but was ever craftily bent upon
exploiting the weaker sides of those she met for the furtherance of her
own ends.

It was several days before she met Toby again; but she waited with a
kind of patience wholly in keeping with the rest of her nature. She
always expected to meet him upon the stairs, and never did so. In the
streets she looked for him. Nights, however, were dark and Toby
apparently elusive. But one evening she was running down the three steps
at the front door just as he arrived home. With a quick breath she