kes for me. He's to pay my expenses and guarantee
me ten thousand a year beyond that. If he doesn't pay me that much, then
it's he that breaks the contract. And of course, he can't make me do
anything that would ruin my voice or my health. He says he's going to
work me like a dog. That's what he thinks I need. He says he can get me
in with the Chicago company for their road tour before their regular
season opens here. He won't let me sing either in Chicago or New York
until I've landed, but he wants me to go to New York this winter and
coach with Scotti, if we can get him. Then go to Mexico City in the
spring and then down to Buenos Aires for their winter season there.
That's July and August, of course, when it's summer up here. By that time
he thinks we'll be ready for Europe; London or Paris. He's rather in
favor of London. He knows all the ropes and he'll buy the people that
have to be bought and square the people that have to be squared and work
the publicity. He says he's the best publicity man in the world and I
guess he knows. Then after a year or two over there, he thinks we'll be
ready to come back to the Metropolitan and clean up."

"And what," asked Mary, "is his share of the clean-up to be?"

"Oh, a half," said Paula; "we'd be equal partners. That's fair enough, I
suppose. I sat there all through lunch while he was talking, hating him;
hating his big blue chin, and his necktie and his great shiny
finger-nails and the way he ate, and feeling, of course, perfectly
frightfully unhappy. I told him I'd let him know what I would do sometime
before to-morrow noon, and as soon as I could I got rid of him. And then
I came up here and cried and cried. And that's something I haven't done
for a long while. I felt as if he was a big spider that had been running
about all over me tying me up in his web. And as if I was a fly and
couldn't get out. There is something spidery about him, you know. The way
he goes back and forth and the way he's so patient and indirect about it
all. It seemed like the end of the world to me before he finished, as if
I never was going to see John again. Oh, I cried my eyes out. Well, and
then about an hour ago I came to. I realized that I hadn't signed his
horrible contract and that I needn't. And that when this beastly season
was over,--and it isn't going to last much longer, thank goodness,--I
could go home to John and lock up the piano and never look at a score
again. It was like coming out