The big woman flushed darkly through her powder. "There's no 'lurch' about it!" she defended herself with a new sharpness in her tone. "I don't intend to shell out any more of my good money carting Lillie de Lisle around the country as a star, that's all. I suppose I have a right to do as I choose with my own? You oughtn't to complain. I'm offering you a chance that lots of real actors would grab. You can go with the new company, and have better parts, and better pay, than what you're getting now. But you'll have to choose, right away, between me—between us and Lillie de Lisle. Well, what do you say?"
"I say that I choose Miss de Lisle," said Loveland.
Miss Moon burst out laughing, hysterically.
"There, I told you what you'd get!" ejaculated her husband. But she shook her shoulders angrily, seeming to transfer to him all the resentment Loveland had roused.
"Let things alone, can't you?" she snapped. "Gordon's only guying, ain't you, Gordon? Or anyhow, you don't understand. When I said 'choose between us' there's nothing to choose, for Lillie de Lisle hasn't got a thing to offer you, and we have a lot. We can bust her up and when she's bust, she is bust. Why, she hasn't a dime to bless herself with, I shouldn't think. She ain't the savin' kind, and she won't even have any advertisin' paper to go along with, if she wanted to go along on her own. Her name ain't printed on any of the posters; I took care of that, starting out. The slips with 'Lillie de Lisle' are all separate, joined on to the posters with paste—and as for her litho, she's welcome to that. She looks a fright, bad enough to scare crows. The pictorial paper's ours, every sheet of it, and we can start another show inside two days. All we've got to do, is to wire a Chicago agent for a new star, if I don't choose to do the starring myself, and as many folks as we want. Now, you see how things stand, don't you?"
"I think I do," said Loveland.
"Well, what do you decide?"
"The same that I decided before."
"Oh, you do, do you? Ain't you silly! You won't take a good thing when it's offered you?"
"I won't take the thing you've offered me."