“Well, you’ll understand me better before I am done with you,” said the manager, emphatically, “for I’ll make Marion Marlowe a famous singer yet—so famous that people will forget that they ever listened to a croaker like Carlotta.”
“That’s it!” shrieked the woman, who had now grown livid. “That’s right, Clayte Graham. Heap your sneers and slurs upon me! I have made money for you for years in more ways than one—but now that my voice is failing you throw me over.”
“You have brought it on yourself, Carlotta, with your fiendish jealousy,” said the man, more gently.
In an instant the woman was on her knees before him, the tears streaming over her painted face and her voice quivering with emotion.
“Oh, Clayte, Clayte, don’t you know it is because I love you! Don’t you know that there is nobody else in this world for me but you, and yet you reproach and abuse me for being jealous!”
“Pshaw!” said the man, indifferently, as he moved away from her. “You are in love with yourself far more than with me, Carlotta. You’d scratch the eyes out of my head this minute if you dared to.”
The woman sprang to her feet and confronted him like a tigress.
“And you refuse to listen to my entreaties?” she asked, breathlessly. “Am I to understand that in future you will do nothing to please me?”
“I shall do nothing that interferes with my success in business,” said the man, very sternly. “I would be a fool indeed to let myself be influenced by a woman.”