“And now,” she went on, “comes the opportunity of a lifetime. My opportunity. Rodney McBride, one of the richest men in Chicago, is making up a yachting party to go north. Think of it! A yacht a hundred and forty feet long! Singing, dancing, drinking! Oh, yi! yi! Moonlit waters. Mackinac Island, the Soo Canal, Isle Royale in Lake Superior, speed boats, sailboats and all that!” She sprang to her feet in a gesture of great impatience. “Think of giving up all that just to work out there on the lot with five thousand people staring at you!”
“But think of having your name on the electric signs all over the country!” Jeanne murmured.
“Nix!” Miss LeMar stamped her foot. “When it’s all over the thing’s sure to be scrapped. The picture’s too big for the lot.
“They’ve shot some fine little stories out there, short ones; but not this. No! No!” Again she stamped her foot.
“I thought—” Her tone changed as she dropped into a chair. “I thought that since you are my double, so perfectly, and since you’d been in light opera, you might—” she cleared her throat—“you might be willing to take my place on—on the lot.”
“As Lorena LeMar?” Jeanne stared at her in unbelief.
“As Lorena LeMar. It wouldn’t be hard, really.” The movie star’s tone was eager. “All you’d have to do would be to study the script, get the continuity and the lines, then just go on and—and do your bit.
“And really,” she half apologized, “it’s not as if the thing would ever get across. It never will. One of those natural things, not spicy at all—don’t you know? And besides, there’s the lot—it’s too small. It could only be done properly in Hollywood, really.”
Jeanne looked at Florence. Florence was gazing at the fire. Jeanne knew what that meant. Florence was saying to herself: “She’s off again! First it was light opera, then grand opera; now it’s to be the movies.”
“Tell me,” Jeanne’s tone was little more than a whisper, “the story of this movie.”