e grovelling. And
Sally had tasted something that thrilled her. She had come into contact
with a life resembling the life led by those who travelled in the motor
broughams she so much admired. She was ravenous for such a life. Her
natural arrogance was roused and inflamed by the comparison she so
instinctively made between her natural surroundings and those to which
she felt she was entitled by her capacities. She thought with contempt
of the other girls at Madame Gala's. The wine she had drunk, the noises
she had heard, mounted higher. She was primed with conceit and
excitement. Hitherto she had only determined by ambition to use the
world and attain comfort and success. Now she felt the _power_ to attain
this success. She could not experience the feeling without despising
every other feeling. She looked round the room in scorn--at the dull,
shabby bed, and the meagre furniture, and at the little old woman who
sat by the empty fireplace with so miserable an air of confirmed
poverty. She looked higher, at Miss Jubb, and saw afresh the stupid
incompetence of such a creature. Even old Perce and Mrs. Perce led in
her new vision a life that was good enough for them, but not good enough
for Sally. There was a better way, and Sally would not rest until she
had secured that way. And she had the opportunity opening to her. Gaga
had shown her as much. With the vehement exaggeration of youth that is
still half-childhood, Sally saw her own genius. She felt that the world
was already in her grasp. She felt like a financier before a coup. She
felt like a commander who sees the enemy waver. For this night triumph
seemed at hand, through some means which the heat of her brain did not
allow her to analyse, but only to relish with exultation.

x

In the morning Sally had a heavy head as the result of her unusual
entertainment, and she awoke to a sense of disillusion. The room was the
same ugly room, but her dreams had fled. So must Cinderella have felt
upon awaking after her first ball. The colours had faded; the rapturous
consciousness of power had died in the night. Sally felt a little girl
once more, younger and more impotent than she had been for months. The
walk to Regent Street restored her. She once again imagined herself into
the talk with Gaga; she stressed his offer of friendship and his plea
for help. It would be all right; it _was_ all right. She had made no
mistake. Only, she was not as carelessly happy as she had been i