It would be a crime
against Heaven--observe that this crisis has made me
religious--to look upon it seriously at all. Won't you come to
see me, Morgan? You must need a friend and surely I have the
right to be that friend. Why not come to-morrow afternoon; or
when you will, if you will send me a message. H. T."

"P. S.--I hope she'll see this so that she quarrels with you and
casts you off."

He knew he must go to her, but he shrank from doing so as yet, though
he did not try to explain to himself the shrinking. So he sent her a
line saying he would come one afternoon when he felt he had the
courage. After posting the letter he had a great longing to cry.

He realised the ugliness of the position now, his terrible relation to
this strange, hysteric woman, and the thought kept darting through his
mind like a whizzing shaft of flame: "I am married to her, I am
married to her!"

To weave poetry out of life! That was simply to attempt what poets and
philosophers and even imaginative men of affairs, seduced by the
apparent novelty of the notion, had attempted before him. At a certain
point of existence, such men find it easy to tell themselves--as if in
unsuspecting answer to some dim foresight of what the experiment might
lead to--that it does not matter much what happens to one in life, so
long as it is a series of interesting happenings; interesting, that
is, to each according to his temperament. But poems woven of reality
are not the same detached products as poems written on paper. They are
an integral part of life, and, as such, related to its great forward
sweep. All the consequences that attach to human action must attach to
the particular weaving, however fantastic and pleasing the immediate
pattern.

Morgan was now face to face with the consequences of this attitude he
had taken towards existence, though it had been forced on him by his
temperament. And they were consequences that were not goodly to look
upon.

Cleo had gone early to the theatre to go into the accounts and to show
everybody she was not in the least disconcerted. When he himself
arrived some time later she informed him that last night's takings
were about twenty-five pounds, but she had already paid away the bulk
of it for fresh advertising. She was once more calm and business-like,
despite that their funds were exhausted, and besides various
liabilities there were the salaries and wages to be paid at the