"What's going to happen to-morrow?" he could not help saying, when
Cleo had at length finished telling him her estimate of the stage
manager's character.

"When mid-day comes, the salaries shall be paid without fail,"
replied Cleo unhesitatingly. "You just don't trouble your mind," she
added. "Leave me to arrange everything."

He pressed her for details. But beyond a general assurance, conveyed
with an air of mystery that on the morrow he would find their coffers
quite replete, she would tell him nothing. They went to lunch
together, for there was always some small silver at the bottom of
Cleo's purse, and she then gave him to understand she had business to
transact here and there during the afternoon, and that he must amuse
himself alone as best he could.

Vaguely supposing that this secret business had reference to the
raising of funds, Morgan separated from her and went back to their
rooms, where, at least, he felt he was hidden away from the world. A
little later he had an idea. He would go and see Helen.

CHAPTER VII.

Helen looked wonderfully sweet to-day and an atmosphere of quiet calm
seemed to pervade the room. It seemed to Morgan as if he had entered
into a haven. Helen wore a simple grey gown that went well with her
subdued demeanour. The sanity and soundness that underlay her
occasional frolicsomeness and high spirits became in that moment
accentuated for him; and the almost superstitious feeling he had
experienced at seeing her at the theatre now returned to him, the
feeling that she was possessed of some magic power to redeem him.

"I have been too shame-faced to come before," he began. "I knew I did
not deserve to see you again."

"Don't, please," said Helen. "If you make speeches of that kind you
will force me to be flippant, quite against my sense of the fitness of
things at this moment. Not that I want to be too tragic, but my state
of mind is rather a complex one. What's yours?"

"Mine is a very simple one. I am just conscious of mere existence and
of a heavy weight on my head."

"I don't like your symptoms, Morgan. If I diagnose correctly, they
mean nascent 'desperation.' Now, so long as I am in the world, you
ought never to develop that disease."

"But I omitted one important factor of my state of mind," he
confessed; "and that is the knowledge that you _are_ in the world."

"And does it take your attention off the weight of the load--just a
little?"

"It is the one pleasa