Dressmakers -- Fiction; Love stories; Young women -- Fiction
At times Sally could not bear to be with Gaga at all. She told him she
was ill, and that the doctor said she must go out; and in spite of his
protests she would run from the house and walk rapidly for an hour about
Kensington, and even into Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. The weather
made no difference to her. She was desperate, and must seek some relief
from the horror of being cooped up in that house with her secret. She
had begged the doctor to give no hint of it to Gaga, and had tried to
pretend to herself that he had been mistaken in his diagnosis; but her
pretence was of no avail, because each day she became more certain that
he had been right. And still she could not think of any way out. She had
been betrayed by a single act of irresistible passion.
Presently, as her frenzy spent itself, Sally began to think more
collectedly. She remembered Toby's last letter. She began to think of
him. She thought even that she could run away and be divorced and
abandon all her schemes for the sake of the baby. But as soon as Sally
had such an imagining she knew that it was an impossibility for her.
Only as a last resource could she accept her disaster. All her
self-confidence fought against it. She must find some other way. At
first she thought it would be simple to do so; but as her brain worked
upon the problem she found so many difficulties in the way that she
again lost hope. The baby would ruin everything. Finally the return of
Toby seemed to her to be the first necessity. She must see him. She
could do nothing until she saw him. Longing seized her--a quick sense
that at least he was her lover, and therefore her partner. She wrote to
Toby, asking him to come and meet her as soon as he reached London. Then
she waited, her exhausted torments having left her in a mood of
glittering-eyed sullen misery that might at any moment rise sharply to
angry shrillness. Calm hid genuine fear, and it was the calm of one who
has no hope other than self-control.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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