But she dined! She drank more wine than she had intended to do, and it went to her head. She laughed, and became talkative, forgetting her refined accent, and thereby enjoying herself very much more than she would otherwise have done, and becoming a good and lively companion for the meal. Gaga could not respond to her talk, because it quickly became evident that, with all the good will in the world, he could not talk; but as the wine reached his head also he began to laugh at her remarks, and to look at her with such an expression of adoration in his chocolate eyes that Sally grew more and more at ease and more and more familiar with the passing of each minute, and the increasing effect of the wine she had taken. She sparkled, less in her speech than in her exhilarated and exhilarating manner. She was all nerves, all dancing coquettry.
"Don't look at me like that!" she pleaded, archly. Gaga's eyes glowed, and his mouth was stretched with laughing. "Make me feel as if...."
"How do I look at you? How does it make you feel?" asked Gaga with that kind of persistent seriousness with which a man talks to a pretty girl when he has drunk enough wine. "Tell me, Sally, how does it make you feel, Sally?" He reached his hand across the table, and laid it upon hers. "I mean, Sally.... I mean, if it makes you feel.... I'm sorry, d'you see? I look at you as I feel. I don't know how I look at you. I look at you...."
Gaga was not at all drunk; he was merely sententious and sentimental. Sally darted a roguish eye, first round her, and then at Gaga, enjoying very specially this stage of the meal. It was all fun to her, all flattering to her vanity, all a part of the noise and excitement and well-being that was making her spirits mount. She allowed her hand to remain under his for a moment; then tried to draw it away; then pinched his thumb gently and recovered her liberty. Gaga was unlike Toby. He had not the assurance of the physically vigorous. He was gentle, mild, stammering, and ineffective. But he was giving Sally a glorious evening's entertainment. At one step they had overleapt all that separated them, and were friends. He began to tell her, unasked, about his business, about his mother, about everything.
"My mother's a wonderful woman," he said. "Wonderful! She's made that business with her own hands. She began in a small way, and the business is almost out of her control. Not quite; but.... She's done it all herself. All herself. Wonderful woman. And yet, you know, Sally; she's hard. I wonder if you understand what I mean? She's always been a good mother to me. I wish I could tell you how good. There's the business I'm in, for example. But Sally.... I'm not a business man.... If I had somebody to do the business side, I've got.... I can design dresses. That's what I'm good at. She knows. She lets me design them, sometimes. I've got a touch, d'you see? But she's hard. She's so afraid of anybody meddling. She's made that business herself, and she won't let anybody else touch it. She has me to help her with the accounts; but, as I say, I'm not a business man. She thinks I'm a fool. You don't think I'm a fool, do you, Sally?"
"Me? You?" cried Sally, looking at him guilelessly. "Mr. Bertram!"
"She's very ill, Sally. Very ill indeed. I can see it. You know, you feel something. You see her keeping on and keeping on. Something's bound to go, sooner or later. It worries me, Sally. It worries me." From his long and unusually consecutive speech, Gaga fell into a silence. Meaninglessly, he repeated: "It worries me. That's one reason I asked you to come out to-night, Sally. I'm worried."
"Poor man!" murmured Sally.
"You know, you're kind, Sally. I can see your little bright eyes shining; and they make me ... they make me...." He was once again the old, incoherent Gaga, fingering his unused cheese knife and looking at her with an expression of pathetic helplessness that made Sally wary lest she should betray amusement. "I feel you understand. You're not very old, Sally; but I feel you understand. And.... I've always felt that. You're such a wonderful little girl. I mean...." He broke off with a gesture of vague despair of his power to say what he actually did mean. "I feel you can help me."
"Can I?" asked Sally, swiftly. "I'd love to."