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"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
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