"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 fertility. "I mean, in the evenings." "Yes," said Gaga, dubiously. "I suppose you might." He was struck with a rather superfine notion. "But you're not," he concluded. He enjoyed a manifest triumph. "No." Sally raised a declamatory finger. "But if I _was_, you wouldn't know it." They had reached an impassable spot in their talk. Sally had confounded Gaga. Neither he nor she was quite as mentally alert as they had both been when hungry; and the Chianti was beginning to make them drowsy and rather slow-witted. But having embarked upon the question of possible knowledge of character they could not, in consideration of their slight heaviness, be expected to relinquish a topic so circular and so suggestive of personal intimacy. As the wine acted more powerfully upon them it was more and more to themselves that their thoughts and speeches turned. "I feel sometimes that I'm a great fool," confessed Gaga. "But I'm not really a fool. I see a lot, and ... I don't seem able to act on it. D'you understand what I mean?" "Weak," Sally vouchsafed, wine-candid. Gaga glanced quickly at her. "I don't think I'm weak. I...." His thoughts strayed. "See, I've never had much of a chance to show what I can do. My mother's such a much stronger character than I am."