s nurse once
more. It did not matter to the doctor, who had no interest in Gaga
except as a patient.

"It's rough on you, though," he said to Sally. He was a bald man of
fifty, with a cold eye and a cold, fish-like hand. He was interested in
nothing outside his profession and his meals. To him Sally was a plucky
little thing; but Sally could not find that he thought anything more
about her. She shrugged again. "So sorry," said the doctor. "Good-bye."

When he had gone, Sally frowned. Bother! All her plans were interrupted.
Her energies were subdued. Thoughtfully, she began to consider how far
she might act alone. She wondered whether she might persuade Gaga to let
her go out in the mornings or the afternoons. He _must_ do so, and yet
she knew he would not like it. Although the decision always lay with
her, he had the sick and nervous man's fussy wish to seem to make a
choice. He wanted to be there, to be heard, to announce Sally's decision
in a loud voice as his own.

"What a man he is!" thought Sally. "Big kid. Got to have a say in
everything. And he _can't_!" The last words were spoken aloud, so
vehemently did she feel them. "He can't, because he doesn't know.
O-o-oh!"

She beat one hand upon the other, in a sudden passion. For a moment she
had an unexpected return of hysteria. And as she took two or three
fierce paces Sally without warning felt dizzy. She clung to a chair; and
the dizziness immediately passed. It frightened her, none the less,
because she had been feeling unwell for some days, and she had a horror
of illness.

"Here, here!" she exclaimed. "None of that. _I_ mustn't get ill. Oh,
lor! If I was to get ill _wouldn't_ there be a shimozzle! Gaga'd go off
his head. And everything else--pouf!"

It amused her to realise this. It made her forget the unexplained sick
dizziness which had given rise to her reflections, because the thing
which Sally above everything else had always desired was to be as
important as she now found herself. At the age of eighteen she was
dominating a world which she had long since determined to conquer.

xiv

During the week following, Sally had no time for any thing but
attendance upon Gaga. She was herself feeling sick and wretched; and
Gaga was very ill indeed. He was sometimes extremely feeble, so that a
lethargy fell upon him and he lay so quiet that Sally believed him to be
asleep. But at her first movement he would unclose his eyes and groan
her name, groping with