"Padden 's cleared out. He was our manager, you know, and now he 's run away with the treasury and left us high and dry. Went last night, it seems, after the show."
"Left you?" repeated Christian. The old story was a new one to him and he did not understand. Miss Sinclair thought him dense, but proceeded to enlighten him in words of one syllable, as it were.
"That 's why I was telegraphing," she concluded. "There was a feller in Capetown I used to know; I want to strike him for my fare out of this."
So she was in trouble; there was a call upon her courage, an attack on her defenselessness. Miss Sinclair, glancing sidelong at his face, saw it redden quickly and was confirmed in her hope that the "feller" in Capetown was but an alternative string to her bow.
"That telegram took all I 'd got but a couple of shillings," she added. "Padden had been keeping us short for a long time."
The long street straggled under the sun, bare to its harsh illumination, a wide tract of parched dust hemmed between walls and roofs of gray corrugated iron. The one thing that survived that merciless ordeal of light without loss or depreciation was the girl. They halted at the door of the one-storied hotel where her room was and here again the shaded stoep was full of ears and eyes and Christian had to struggle with words to make his meaning clear to her and keep it obscure to every one else.
"It 'll be all right," he assured her stammeringly. "I 'll see that it 's all right. I 'll come here an' see you."
"When?" she asked, and helped him with a suggestion. "This evening? There 'll be no show to-night."
"This evening," he agreed.
Miss Sinclair gave him her best smile, all the better for the mirth that helped it out. She was as much amused as she was relieved. As she passed the bar on her way indoors, she winked guardedly to a florid youth within who stood in an attitude of listening.