o descend, whereupon the uproar ceased abruptly in
favour of a mighty spontaneous outbreak of cheering, unmistakably
ironic.

Those behind the scenes had been as much astonished as those in front,
and the stage manager, as soon as he had collected his wits, had
adopted the only sensible alternative the situation afforded.

A silence fell again upon the theatre. Not a person stirred. An
obvious curiosity as to what was to follow possessed the house. In a
minute the curtain rose again--on the same apartment in the palace.
Cleo reclined on the same couch, robed in a terra-cotta gown which
Morgan recognised at once. And then there came a tapping at a little
window, and, after much appropriate dramatic business, this window was
opened by Cleo, and her lover leaped into the room, man-like and
adventurous.

But Cleo's audacious mistake had wrought a miracle on the audience,
destroying the stage-illusion, and rousing its dormant light of
intelligence. Its capacity for being profoundly played upon and
emotionally excited by the inartistic unrealities of absurd
characterisation and of absurd combinations of circumstance had been
rendered unresponsive. In vain did the play appeal to its ethical
sense, striving to enlist its hope for the ultimate triumph of the
Good, the True, and the Wronged. It had begun to view "The Basha's
Favourite" in an extremely critical mood, and to manifest its keen
sense of the utter impossibility of a play, which in years gone by had
enchanted and moved to tears average audiences, not only in its native
land, but in London as well, where it had been a sort of fountain-head
for multitudinous adaptation.

Cleo, however, went straight on with the performance, carrying it
through with an indomitable defiance, caring not at all that the
intensest passages, which otherwise would have thrilled, were received
with scorn and laughter and ironical cheers and cries of "Go it, old
girl!" Each time a servant made an entry he was received with an
enormous ovation. Single voices were heard again and again in
sarcastic comment, now from the top of the house, now from the back.
As the curtain fell at the end of each act, the disorder became
volcanic, but the stage manager knew better than to allow the curtain
to go up again in response to the continued applause.

Certain it was that the audience thoroughly enjoyed its evening, and,
when the curtain fell for the last time, surpassed itself in a great
demonstration