Lucinda shook her head. "I'm sure I don't know," she said, smiling. "Please be patient with my stupidity in money matters."
"I mean to say: With profits of approximately half a million a year in sight, do we want to see the third share that would ordinarily go to capital diverted to the pockets of people who have no interest in our business except as a source of revenue?"
"Can we avoid that?"
"Simply enough, if you care to take the risk. I'll be frank with you and confess I'm not financially in a position to invest in the business myself. But if you should decide to back yourself, use your own money to finance Linda Lee Inc. you would ultimately receive two-thirds of the profits instead of the one you'd be entitled to as the star. And no outsider would have anything to say about the way we conduct our own business."
"I don't think I care about that," Lucinda observed thoughtfully. "But it does appeal to me, the idea that if I use my own money nobody but myself can suffer if we're making a mistake."
"Then—you will find the capital yourself, Mrs. Druce?"
"I think I can manage it without too much trouble."
Lontaine sighed quietly and relaxed. The contented glow of last night crept back into his eyes. He produced his cigarette-case, and began to smoke in luxurious puffs.
"Need there be any trouble?"
"I'm only wondering what Harford Willis will say." Lucinda laughed quietly. She could imagine the horror that would overspread the carven countenance of the gentleman of the old school when he learned that she meant to add the unpardonable solecism of play-acting to the heinous but after all fashionable estate of divorcée. "An old friend of my father's who looks after my estate," she explained to Lontaine's echo of the name. "He thinks I've disgraced myself as it is. When I tell him what more I mean to do, I'm sure he'll think I'm damned beyond redemption—socially, at all events."