encounter. Her face was lined;
her hair bleached and brittle; but the long thin nose, and hard thin
mouth, and parched thin cheeks all gave to her glance a chilling quality
hard to endure. Her hands were those of a skeleton: all the bones could
be seen white under the cream skin. Sally, abashed and full of
flutterings of secret guilt, stood before her as she might have stood
before one omniscient; but her brain was not abashed, and her hearing
was as strained as her alert wits. So the two hard personalities
encountered. Presently Madam smiled--a smile that was tortured, like
Gaga's, and showed anaemic gums but a row of astonishingly good teeth.

"Sally," she said. "Sit down there, will you. Now, you've been here
nearly a year. D'you know that? You were seventeen when you came. You're
eighteen now.

"Nearly," interjected Sally.

"Well, when you came you had seven shillings a week. We're going to make
it ten shillings from now. And of course overtime as usual. You
understand that I don't want you to talk outside about your wages. At
the end of what we call the financial year we may be able to give you
more. I can't promise that. But Miss Summers tells me that you are a
good and willing worker; and I can tell for myself that you are
intelligent. I think it will be worth while for you to stay here; and if
you go on as you have begun I shall hope to keep you. Now don't get the
idea that you're indispensable. Don't get conceited. But be encouraged
by knowing that I take an interest in you. That will do, Sally, thank
you...."

"Thank you, Madam," responded Sally, demurely. She stood in an attitude
of humility, a tremulous smile of candid satisfaction playing round her
mouth.

Nobody in the workroom could have guessed from her manner the turbulence
of Sally's emotions. Pleasure, relief, self-confidence struggled within
her. She felt an enormous creature surveying a pigmy world; and yet,
mechanically, she resumed her sewing at the point where she had left it.
The other girls all turned inquisitive faces in her direction. Was it
the sack? A row? A rise? Nothing at all? Sally was a baffling creature
... a white-faced cocket. She was deep. That word of Miss Rapson's had
entered the hearts of the girls. Sally had heard it; she knew that they
felt her superiority, and gaped at it with faint resentment. A flash
told her now that they were all on tiptoe, and her nonchalance was a
piece of acting which she enjoyed for its effect