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 w