her own responsibility only, it had been thought possible
that he might possess resources, with the result that he had been made
co-defendant.

Cleo seized the paper and calmly tore it up.

Then followed a long consultation, Cleo manifesting some signs of
depression at the sum total of the results of her efforts, beside
which her unshaken belief in the future contrasted curiously.
Everything had been against her. She had had a bad company and a
stupid first-night audience, and had from the first been crippled by
want of money. She recapitulated all her disadvantages, dwelling on
each and making the most of it. But this was only by way of beginning
a long wail of lament. The undisguised coldness of his demeanour
towards her ever since the night of her debut had wounded her deeply,
though she had been too proud to say anything. Her indictment against
him was bitter and severe. The discontinuance of his slavish
admiration for her and of his blind belief in her genius was in her
eyes an unpardonable sin. As soon as the public had turned against
her, she averred, he sheep-like, had followed their example. And he
was the one human being in the whole world whom she had trusted and
believed in, the one she would have looked to for sympathy and
comfort. She had shown her trust in him by marrying him--a privilege
she would not lightly have accorded to another--and he should have
stood by her in her misfortunes. Why, so-and-so had told her her
acting had never been surpassed on the English stage; and he had seen
every piece played in London during the last thirty years. She
repeated the flattery and fawning that had been bestowed upon her by
the men who had been fluttering around her, accepting all as the
natural outpour of their sincerity; she quoted with unction the lying
notices she had shown him the day before.

Morgan knew better than to expect her to have one thought of sympathy
for him, to utter one word of sorrow for the plight into which her
stage-madness had brought him. She seemed to think that his dominating
sentiment should be, throughout all and despite all, one of gratitude
to her for having married him. In proof of which she now mentioned
that she had won the admiration of millionaires, of foreign counts by
the score, of Indian princes and Eastern potentates, all of whom had
written her letters of sympathy at her shameful treatment by the
public, had declared their love for her, and had offered to place
their w