If she had taken the situation as it was, faced the meaning of it with firm lips and a steady eye, there would have been hope—­more, there would have been salvation for her.  But frail, sensitive, tender-hearted, little Sally Bishop was not of that blood, that breeding was not in her bone.  She took the threads, coloured them one and all with that deceptive dye of the imagination, and wove a romance out of the materials of a stern reality.

To every intent, to every purpose in her mind, she was a married woman.  The constant use of his name in the hotels where they stayed abroad had fostered the delusion in her mind.  That, in reality, she was still Sally Bishop was a fact, obvious enough, patent enough, and one which she was not so foolish as to try and force herself to forget; but she was Sally Bishop only in name.  So, in contrary comparison, other women were wives only in name, yet had no husbands.

The true, logical state of the case never made its appeal to her.  She was too much of a romantic, living, as many women do, in a cloudland of hallucination, until a lightning circumstance tears its rent in the vaporous fabric and experience thunders in their ears.  Had she consented to the reasoning that she had but left the plying of one trade in exchange for another; had she admitted the fact that she had but abandoned one master for the service of another, there would have been every chance that, if the end should come, she would be able to take up the threads where they had broken off and wring profit from the ultimate position.  But no such thought entered her mind.  Emancipation was no goal for her ambitions.  She sought for chains to gyve about her soul and, in her relationship with Traill, she fondly dreamed that she had found them.  If the real aspect of the case had forcibly made its way into her consideration, she would never have accepted the situation, never have laid seal to the compact.

All this delirium of reasoning, she showed in the first few moments to Janet when she had returned to London.  Down at Kew she spent an evening, delighted, with a justifiable pride, to be seen in one of the dainty frocks that Traill had bought her.

“So you’re married now, I ’ear,” said Mrs. Hewson.

“Yes.”  Sally beamed with her reply, and Janet watched her with questioning eyes.

“I hope you’re happy.”

“I couldn’t be happier,” Sally answered; then she dragged Janet upstairs to the room they had shared together for two years, and throwing her parcels—­presents that she had brought from abroad—­on to the bed, she twined her arms round Janet’s slender neck and covered the thin, drawn face with kisses.