m an all-conquering
power before which destiny itself could make no front. Had he been an
artist he would have painted her as the triumphant figure of allegory,
standing amid the stars with one foot planted on the terrestrial
globe. His attitude towards her was one of wondering admiration and
blind assent; with so much deliberateness did she turn her vision on
that seething world which she was preparing to conquer, and which had
always been to him such a whirling, giddy, incomprehensible chaos that
he had never been able to look steadily at it. Now, timidly peeping
from behind her skirts, he ventured to open his eyes on it. Alone, he
would never have known where to touch the heterogeneous, noisy mass,
but she, displaying a definite and intimate knowledge of its
constituents, at once began to establish relations with it here and
there. These efforts of hers seemed to him at first random and
isolated, and he watched with interested expectancy for the
light-giving result as a child might watch the preparations for an
elaborate conjuring trick. Eventually he began to see, with a pleased
sort of surprise, that the floating set of relations entered into by
Cleo was assuming recognisable shape as a theatrical enterprise.

The marvel she inspired in him deepened daily, so wonderful seemed her
purposefulness, her energy, her faith in herself. And though, beside
these qualities of hers, his diffidence compelled him to
self-effacement, he yet seemed to draw something from her very
superabundance.

From the beginning he had given up all the money to her, only too
pleased to be rid of the control of it. But when the arrangements were
fairly advanced, she insisted on his mastering the details of the
expenditure she was making and on going into the figures with him each
time she drew up what she considered a likely profit and loss account,
which she did at least once each evening. The result was always on the
right side and always large, and he was not quite clear that it did
not necessarily represent a sure fact, if a future one. Figures had
always irritated him, but, as she performed all the arithmetical
processes and he simply had to exert his intelligence to the extent of
grasping what each item stood for, he was pleased to find himself
equal to the effort.

Their three hundred pounds in the meantime had dwindled considerably,
but, as Cleo showed no signs of anxiety, it never occurred to Morgan
to feel uneasy. Cleo, who, for t