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. S