“Jealousy, you mean?”
“Not necessarily the kind you're thinking of. But it just doesn't do.”
“Some managers will allow married couples in their companies,” Potter said, adding emphatically: “I won't! I never have and I never will! Never! There's just one thing every soul in my support has got to keep working for, and that is a high-tension performance every night in the year. If married people are in love with each other, they're going to think more about that than about the fact that they're working for me. If they aren't in love with each other, there's the devil to pay. I'd let the best man or woman in the profession go—and they could go to vaudeville, for all I cared!—if I had to keep their wives or husbands travelling with us. I won't have 'em! My soul! I don't marry, do I?”
Packer rose. “Is there anything else for me, Mr. Potter?”
“Yes. Take this interlined script, get some copies typewritten, and see that the company's sides are changed to suit it. Be especially careful about that young Miss—ah—Miss Malone's. You'll find her part is altered considerably, and will be even more, when Mr. Canby gets the dialogue for other changes finished. He'll let you have them to-morrow. By the way, Packer, where did you find—” He paused, stretched out his hand to the miniature sedan chair of liqueurs, took a decanter and tiny glass therefrom, and carefully poured himself a sparkling emerald of creme de menthe. “Will you have something, Mr. Canby?” he asked. “You, Tinker?”
Both declined in silence; they seemed preoccupied.
“Where did I what, Mr. Potter?” asked the stage-manager, reminding him of the question left unfinished.
“What?”
“You said: 'By the way, where did you find—'”
“Oh, yes.” Potter smiled negligently. “Where did you find that little Miss Malone? At the agents'?”