Nevertheless, it was upon Toby that the immediate future depended. Not yet has woman the power to attain her ends except by and through men. Sally waited in ever-increasing excitement for some word from Toby, some hint of his coming. She was kept within the house at all times except during her short flights in the morning or afternoon. She could not be long away from the house. And she must rely upon a letter, and then perhaps a brief meeting, for her purposes. The time was going. Gaga was getting better, was growing more and more like the man in whose company she had gone to Penterby. His demand upon her presence was increasing in power, because he was sitting up, leaving his room, coming in search of her. Sally felt that already he was beginning to exercise an inquisition. A tremor shook her nerves. Sometimes it seemed to her that Gaga's glance held a strangeness, almost a faint suspicion. When she thought that she was conscious of a feeling akin to aversion. Aversion had not yet arrived. Gaga was still to be despised. But Sally already felt that she might presently find her task of deception very hard under the constant scrutiny of such futile devotedness as he displayed. And Toby did not write. She had no means of knowing where he was, whether the voyage upon which he was engaged would be long or short, how much more time must elapse before their meeting. The suspense was killing her. More than once, hearing Gaga calling to her, Sally had hidden from him, and, at discovery, had been unable to conceal the hard coldness of her feeling for him. If Toby would only come! If he would only come! She thought that her nerve must before long give way, and once it had gone she would be prematurely ruined. She felt trapped. She even, desperately, would slip on a coat at nights and walk up and down outside the house, in case Toby should be lurking near on the chance of seeing her. She thought he might come thus. And on each occasion when she went out of the house in this way she returned to find Gaga standing in the dining-room, with the door open in such a way that he could command a view of the inside of the front door. The knowledge that he was waiting for her, and watching her, filled Sally with cold fury. His innocent delight at her return had the air of being a pretence. She could not suppose his eager caresses to be other than penitence for suspicion or an assertion of his claims upon her in perpetuity. The distress made her unresponsive, even repressive. Her foot tapped upon the floor even while she could not wholly quell his convulsive nervous embrace. And Toby did not come.