n the
first realisation. She had recognised that the battle was not yet won,
and that much had still to be done before she could claim the victory
which last night had seemed in her hands. At all events, hatred of her
little ugly home was undiminished. She felt horror of it.

Arrived at the work room, Sally saw it in a new light. She was
permanently changed. The girls had become nothing; even Miss Summers had
become a very good sort of woman, but subtly inferior. There was not
one of the girls who could help Gaga as she was going to do; not one of
them who could earn the advantages which Sally was going to reap. She
settled almost with impatience to work which last night had been left
unfinished. All the time that she was engaged upon it her thoughts were
with other prospects, other deliberate intentions. She was restless and
uneasy--first of all until she had seen Gaga and gauged her effect upon
him in the morning's grey, finally because another secret conflict was
going on beneath her attention. She did not understand what she was
feeling, and this made her the more easily exasperated when cotton
knotted or a sudden noise made her head throb. "I'm out of sorts," she
thought. She tried to laugh in saying: "The morning after the night
before." Her malaise was something more than that.

Gaga came into the room during the morning, haggard and anxious-looking.
The lines in his pallid face were emphasised; his eyes had a faintly
yellowish tinge like the white of a stale egg. In shooting her first
lightning observation of him Sally clicked "Bilious." There was a little
smile between them, and Gaga went out of the room again, languid and
indifferent to everything that was occurring round him. Sally had an
impulse to find some reason for going into his room, but she did not
dare to go. She sewed busily. Perhaps she would see him later. She
peeped into the room at lunch-time, but he was not there, and in the
afternoon she heard from Miss Summers that he was unwell, and would not
be coming back that day. She heard the news with relief; but also with
sudden fright. If--if--if he should have become afraid of her! If he
should have repented! If, instead of allowing her to help and to
benefit, Gaga should become her enemy! Men were so strange in the way
they behaved to girls--so suspicious and funny and brusque--that
anything might have happened in Gaga's mind. Sally recollected herself.
This mood was a bad mood; any loss of self-c