glowing with contentment. She at last observed
the two talkers slouch out of the restaurant, the man in very
baggy-kneed trousers and a loose coat, and the girl in a dress of home
make. A quick wrinkle showed in Sally's grimacing nose as she brought
her professional eye to bear; and then the two talkers were gone and
were forgotten. Sally and Gaga were quite alone at their end of the
room, in a corner, favorably remote for intimate conversation from the
remaining diners.

"Funny us not knowing what they were talking about," mused Sally. "You
don't, you know. It's very hard to know what anybody talks about. To
understand it, I mean. Hard to know anybody, too."

"I shouldn't have thought I was hard to know," ventured Gaga.

"I wasn't thinking about you," said Sally, with unconscious cruelty. "I
was thinking.... I've forgotten. Isn't this wine sour! No, I'm getting
used to it--getting to like it. Hasn't half-- I mean, it's got a nice
smooth way of going down." As Sally checked herself she realised that
she was now so much at ease with Gaga that she no longer worried about
her pronunciation or her words when she was with him. Worry? Sally's
conceitedness soared into the air and frowned down upon the faltering
Gaga with something like scorn. Poor Gaga! thought Sally. Instantly her
hardness returned, and she looked at his lined face and the pale lips
that hung a little away from his teeth in sign of ill-health. She saw
his dark grey morning coat, and the slip inside the waistcoat, and his
sober tie. And it seemed to Sally that she saw right into the simple
mind of Gaga. He was so simple, like the hire purchase system. He was
about the simplest man she had ever seen, for his tongue could hardly
utter more than the tamest of words and phrases, and he never seemed to
Sally to keep anything back.

"And yet, you know," she went on, following Gaga's remark and this train
of thought, "there's lots more to know about people than just what you
see--and what they do and say. If you know them ever so well, you only
know a bit of them. You don't know me. You think I'm a little girl in
the workroom, and a worker, and all that."

"I think you're a marvel!" ejaculated Gaga.

"Yes, well, when you've got to the end of thinking I'm a marvel, what
happens? You don't _know_ me any better. I might be a poisoner, or a ...
or a...." Sally's invention failed her. "I might keep a shop, or serve a
bar, or be an actress," she went on, recovering