'We'll tell her, and ask her to witness our signatures,' replied Van Torp without looking up. 'I judge Mrs. Rushmore to have quite a knowledge of business.'
'You seem able to write and talk at the same time,' Margaret said, smiling.
'Business talk, yes.' The pen ran on swiftly. 'There. That's about all, I should say. Do you think you can read my writing? I don't suppose you've ever seen it.'
He turned the page round, and handed it to her. The writing was large and perfectly legible, but very [{320}] different from the 'commercial' hand of most American business men. Any one word, taken at random, might have seemed unformed, at first sight, but the appearance of the whole was oddly strong and symmetrical. Margaret read the clauses carefully. She herself had already signed a good many legal papers in connexion with her engagements and her own small fortune, and the language was not so unfamiliar to her as it would have been to most women.
'Shall I sign first?' she asked, when she had finished. 'My own name? Or my stage name?'
'Your own name, please,' said Van Torp without hesitation. 'The others only binding in your profession, because you appear under it, and it's your "business style."'
She wrote 'Margaret Donne' at the foot of the page in her large and rather irregular hand, and passed the paper back to Van Torp, who signed it. He waved the sheet slowly to and fro, to dry the ink.
'It's only a preliminary agreement,' he said, 'but it's binding as far as it goes and I'll attend to the rest. You'll have to give me a power of attorney for my lawyer in New York. By the bye, if you decide to come, you can do that in Venice, where there's a real live consul. That's necessary. But for all matters of business herein set forth, we are now already "The Madame da Cordova and Rufus Van Torp Company, organised for the purpose of building an Opera-house in the City of New York and for giving public performances of musical works in the same, with a nominal [{321}] capital hereafter to be agreed upon." That's what we are now.'
He folded the sheet, returned it to his inner pocket and held out his hand in a cheerful, business-like manner.
'Shall we shake hands on it?' he asked.