“What!” said Lily. “With a bike and a maid?”
“It’s what you had at Maidstone, so I was told.”
“What a lie!” said Lily. “Three hundred francs is the lowest I’ve ever had. I’ll show you my contracts.”
“Don’t trouble,” said the agent. “I thought ... we can get plenty at that price, you know ... in your style....”
“In my style, perhaps ... but not me.”
“Pooh, the audience doesn’t know the difference.” And he started looking through a register, turning over the pages and repeating mechanically, like a refrain or a lullaby, “The audience doesn’t care a hang; it’s all the same to the audience.” And, suddenly, with his hand flat on the open book and the other ready to take up the pen, with a piercing eye fixed upon Lily, “I can give you a month at a thousand francs ... they want a girl in tights ... at Lisbon.”
“Lisbon?” said Lily. “That’s at the Colosseo. A thousand francs to go to the Colosseo, with one’s luggage and a maid?”
“Well?” broke in the agent. “And what do you want a maid for, you extravagant little beast? Why not your maid’s family while you’re about it? A thousand francs: will you take it? I’ve got some one who will, if you don’t.”
Lily had to say yes or no quickly. Her forehead was wrinkled with the effort of turning the francs into shillings, the shillings into pounds. She consulted her book, like an artiste who doesn’t know, who may not be free, for a whole month. She lowered her chin in her tie, but without smiling ... had a cramp in her stomach, rather ... at a pinch, by leaving Glass-Eye in Paris.... After Lisbon, one generally had Madrid and Barcelona and returned by Marseilles and Lyons. Friends of hers had done well like that. But to accept a lower salary once meant accepting it always, in establishments of the same class; it meant reducing her price, for always, by two pounds a week, at least.
“A thousand francs: will you have it?”