r
husband is growing cold to you. Can you blame him? Have you really tried
to cure those unsightly blemishes?'--meaning what I've got. Still, I
haven't noticed Fillmore growing cold to me, so maybe it's all right."

It was a subdued Sally who received Ginger when he called at her
apartment a few days later on his return from Chicago. It seemed to her,
thinking over the recent scene, that matters were even worse than
she had feared. This absurd revue, which she had looked on as a mere
isolated outbreak of foolishness, was, it would appear, only a specimen
of the sort of thing her misguided brother proposed to do, a sample
selected at random from a wholesale lot of frantic schemes. Fillmore,
there was no longer any room for doubt, was preparing to express
his great soul on a vast scale. And she could not dissuade him. A
humiliating thought. She had grown so accustomed through the years to
being the dominating mind that this revolt from her authority made her
feel helpless and inadequate. Her self-confidence was shaken.

And Bruce Carmyle was financing him... It was illogical, but Sally could
not help feeling that when--she had not the optimism to say "if"--he
lost his money, she would somehow be under an obligation to him, as
if the disaster had been her fault. She disliked, with a whole-hearted
intensity, the thought of being under an obligation to Mr. Carmyle.

Ginger said he had looked in to inspect the furniture on the chance that
Sally might want it shifted again: but Sally had no criticisms to make
on that subject. Weightier matters occupied her mind. She sat Ginger
down in the armchair and started to pour out her troubles. It soothed
her to talk to him. In a world which had somehow become chaotic again
after an all too brief period of peace, he was solid and consoling.

"I shouldn't worry," observed Ginger with Winch-like calm, when she had
finished drawing for him the picture of a Fillmore rampant against a
background of expensive revues. Sally nearly shook him.

"It's all very well to tell me not to worry," she cried. "How can I help
worrying? Fillmore's simply a baby, and he's just playing the fool. He
has lost his head completely. And I can't stop him! That is the awful
part of it. I used to be able to look him in the eye, and he would
wag his tail and crawl back into his basket, but now I seem to have no
influence at all over him. He just snorts and goes on running round in
circles, breathing fire."

Gin