"He realizes it."
"I'll tell you something. Only you needn't go telling everybody."
"I won't tell a soul."
"And watch out for the bodies, too. Well, I'm going to run Claude against Jacques Sennier. Mind you, I wouldn't do it if it wasn't for the libretto. Seems to me the music is good enough to carry it, and it's going to be a lot better now I've made it over. Sennier's new opera is expected to be ready for March at latest. We'll produce ours"—Charmian thrilled at that word—"just about the same time, a day or two before, or after. I'll get together a cast that no opera house in this world or the next can better. I'll have scenery and effects such as haven't been seen on any stage in the world before. I'll show the Metropolitan what opera is, and I'll give them and Sennier a knock out, or I'm only fit to run cinematograph shows, and take about fakes through the one night stands. But Claude's got to back me up. I don't sign any contract till every note in his score's in its place."
"But you'll be in America when he finishes it."
"That don't matter. You're here to see he don't make any changes from what I've fixed on. We've got that all cut and dried now. It's only the writing's got to be done. I'll trust him for that. But there's not a scene that's to be cut out, or a situation to be altered, now I've fixed everything up. If you cable me, 'Opera finished according to decision,' I'll take your word, get out a contract, and go right ahead. You'll have to bring him over."
"Of course! Of course!"
"And I'll get up a boom for you both that'll make the Senniers look like old bones."
He suddenly twisted his body, stuck out his under jaw, and said in a grim and determined voice which Charmian scarcely recognized as his:
"I've got to down the Metropolitan crowd this winter. I've got to do it if I spend four hundred thousand dollars over it."