in a sharp icy fear. The emotions were all gone in an
instant. She was once more self-possessed. She returned to the workroom
with an impassive face.

"He didn't say anything about Madam. He wants me to take round a parcel
he left here last night," she glibly explained. "He's not coming in
to-day at all. I'm to take it round after I leave work."

With immediate care, she went into Madam's room and made up a small
parcel containing a cheap novel which Gaga had left there. This she
brought to her place and kept before her. Incredulously, the other girls
watched and sneered. It was the first inkling they had had of any
special relationship between Sally and Gaga. To the minds of all
occurred memory of that scene in the country, when Gaga had been
entranced by Sally's song. They remembered the unknown girl's joyous
yell, "What price Gaga on the love path! Whey!" And they remembered
Miss Rapson's word about Sally--"deep." The white-faced cocket! Rose
Anstey stared angrily at Sally, who returned the glance with a coolness
the more destructive because it arose from indifference. But Sally knew
all that was going on around her. Gaga had been a fool to ask for her
pointedly; and yet what else, in the circumstances, could he have done?

Her excitement rose as the afternoon progressed; and by the evening she
was in a fever. When all the other girls were gathering together their
work and their out-of-door clothes she joined the general melee with
something that approached fierceness. It was not that Sally had any need
to hurry, for there were two hours ahead of her; but she was on fire to
be gone, to take her little parcel to the hotel, to give the clerk there
news of her intended absence for the night, and to make a careful
toilette before her appointment. The time was too slow for Sally. She
was biting her lips with impatience more than an hour before the time
agreed upon for the meeting. Her old longing for Toby had come back with
extraordinary strength. As the darkness grew she slipped out of the
hotel and into the night-sheltered streets. For long she walked rapidly
about London, examining each clock she passed until the vagaries of them
all so heightened her passion that she could have shrieked at their
fresh discrepancies.

And at last it was nearly eight o'clock, and she walked round and round
the Marble Arch in the tortured light of the ballooned lamps, and round
the outer side of the wide road thereabouts. There was as