ubbed it with her knuckle.

"Oh, I do _hope_ so," breathed Miss Summers. "It would be awful--awful
for all of us--if she didn't. You see...."

"She'll have to die some time," remarked Sally.

"But now!" The head was shaken afresh. Miss Summers gave a heavy sigh.
She had no such youthful confidence as Sally's. She was a born follower,
a born sheep; and with Madam removed she could see nothing ahead but
disaster to the business. Sally had a little difficulty in keeping back
her smile. She thought of this poor old pussycat in fear of her life,
and her lip slightly curled at the knowledge that she alone had superior
knowledge of the situation. Already Sally was casting round for channels
in which her new power might be used. She wanted opportunity. It was
both a chagrin and a secret relief to her that Madam could not yet be
told of the marriage. If she knew it, and disapproved, as Sally knew
that she must do, Madam could at any moment annul Sally's hopes of
taking a leading part in the business. She could alter her will.
Therefore, if she lived, she must be kept ignorant. It would be a
trouble. And yet in spite of her assurance Sally was still suspicious of
her own ability to master every detail in time to carry on the whole
establishment without a great lapse into momentary failure. She planned
as a middle-aged woman. At eighteen her plans were profound. But
instinctively, and in spite of colossal conceit, she understood that
eighteen was not an age at which control can successfully be taken of a
large business. Therefore she was fighting against unacknowledged fear.

During that day she hardly saw Gaga at all. He was at home with his
mother, and did not come to business until the afternoon. Only in the
evening did she creep into his room and submit to his endearments. She
then left, and went to the hotel at which for the present they were to
stay; and here, in the little sitting-room attached to their bedroom,
she was for the first time able to be alone for half-an-hour with her
post-nuptial reflections. They were not all pleasant, and they called
for the exercise of her natural resoluteness. She had comfort, and the
knowledge that she need never again trouble about food and clothing. But
she also knew that a husband is a different sort of person from a lover.
He seemed to her to be a sort of omnipresent nuisance. Her trouble was
that thoughts and ambitions were in conflict with Gaga's amorousness.
He could never under