"Bet your sweet life it isn't! Look here: I read that story, and I know all about it, and I can show you where the author was all wrong with his idea of the kind of a joint Nelly was running——"
"It wasn't what you call a 'joint,' to begin with, Mr. Nolan."
"That's just the very point I'm trying to make. If it isn't a joint you're dancing in, where's Richards get off with his kicking about you not being good enough to marry his son? It's got to be a joint, or there won't be any sense in the way he fusses when he finds out you and Dick are stepping out together. If that place in the book wasn't a joint, I'm a kike!" Nolan paused in triumph to let his argument sink in. "Now"—he brandished a hand at the set—"this is a joint, and a regular one, if you want to know. Some class to this. I doped it all out myself. Take those tablecloths, now: that's the identical kind they were using in Montmartre last time I was in New York. And those panels on the walls—I got the idea for them from Reisenweber's Paradise Room, only these are sportier. And that black woodwork and all.... Why, we've taken the best points of all the classiest joints in New York and lumped them into one set, and improved on them at that. Now when this poor fish of a Richards sees his son dancing with you in a joint like this, he'll have some excuse for claiming you ain't all you might be."
"The trouble is," Lucinda replied gravely—"I mean, from your viewpoint the trouble will be—Richards will never see Dick dancing with me in this set."
"What's the reason he won't?"
Lucinda smiled slightly, shook her head slightly, slightly shrugged. In the course of Nolan's harangue it had been revealed to her that no greater calamity could possibly be visited upon the picture than to permit its essential colour of good taste to be vitiated by the introduction of this purely atrocious set. It would be like asking the public to believe that people accustomed to sup and dance in the Crystal Room at the Ritz had transferred their favour to the roughest cabaret in the purlieus of Longacre Square.
"What's the reason he won't?" Nolan repeated, raising his voice angrily.
"Because I won't work on this set, Mr. Nolan—until it is restored to the design I approved."
"But—my Gawd!—you can't do that, Miss Lee—you can't hold up this production like that. Why, it'll take weeks——"
"How long will it take, please, Mr. Coakley?"