d by her demeanour to begin to think it
was impossible she should not have some mysterious financial resource
to fall back upon for the morrow.

"We shall not want to be very long at the theatre," were her last
words to him that night. "Let us try and get there by ten. I shall pay
the salaries at twelve o'clock and we can leave the house soon
after."

CHAPTER IX.

Morgan's attitude in the morning was one of interested expectancy.
Cleo was as full of vitality as ever. Perhaps it was that, as she
entered the theatre, the sight of her trunk, waiting in the corridor
for redemption, stimulated her masterfulness afresh, for she found
pretext for asserting her authority over everybody on the premises. Up
to the last moment she revelled in the enjoyment of all the powers and
privileges that one acquires over other human beings by engaging to
pay them a wage.

As the time went by and Morgan saw no sign of the appearance of the
requisite cash, he ventured at last to broach the subject to her, and
she replied firmly and clearly:

"At twelve o'clock the salaries shall be paid."

But at the time specified, Cleo, who was sitting with him in her
private room, hid her face in her hands and began to sob hysterically.
Then he was able to elicit the truth. She had passed the last
afternoon interviewing moneylenders, but they had all laughed in her
face--which had simply called forth her contempt for them. As a matter
of fact, she had been expecting a miracle to happen!

A conviction had come to her that, when the moment for making payment
arrived, she would have the necessary money. How or whence it was to
come she had not considered; her belief was simply a blind one.
Though she had not found it waiting for her on her arrival at the
theatre, her faith that the powers that worked the universe could not
possibly allow her to undergo the great humiliation of being a
defaulter towards those she had employed, was still unshaken. In her
the sense of the Ego was so great that, if rightly interpreted, her
feeling about the world would have been found to be that it was
created specially for her and carefully shaped and subordinated to
suit the needs of her existence. She could not understand her being so
utterly beaten as she really was. Her half-crazy, superstitious notion
could only have been combatted by its non-realisation. At her
hesitating confession that she had been expecting the money to come
somehow, Morgan had at once