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 wa