“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.” The singer’s breath was coming in gasps now, and she clenched her hands together until they were bloodless and rigid. “Why do you like this girl so much, Clayte?” she asked, tensely. “Is she so much handsomer than I, or does she sing so much better?” “The public think she is handsomer,” said the man, evasively, “and you have read what the critics say about her voice.” “But you, Clayte, what do you think?” was the woman’s eager answer; “what is there about her that makes you prefer her?” Clayton Graham turned and looked the woman squarely in the eye. “Her greatest charm is her modesty,” he said, slowly and clearly, “and she is attractive to me because she is a virtuous woman.” If he had struck her with a lash the words could not have cut more deeply. The woman shrank away from him, her breath coming shorter and faster. “That is like you, Clayte—to ruin a woman and then insult her!” she hissed between her teeth. “But beware, Clayton Graham. You had better not go too far! Carlotta has blood in her veins, real blood, that will avenge an insult. You may yet live to feel the power of a wronged and scorned woman.” For answer the manager promptly turned his back upon her. The next moment she was alone amid the mocking emblems of mirth. The last vestige of self-control vanished as she fell upon the floor in a perfect frenzy of passion.