"I love it! Feeling the public pulse for what it wants. The psychology of your vaudeville audience is as elementary as a primer and as intricate as life. It is a bloodhound when it comes to detecting the false from the true. Take that little sketch, 'Trapped,' you sent me out to see last week. A more sophisticated audience might have mistaken its brittle epigrammatic quality for brilliancy and its flippancy for cleverness. But not your ten-twenty-thirty's. In real life a husband doesn't psychanalyze his wife's lover. He horsewhips him. And that lovely blank-verse fantasy that you attempted on your own. That is the sort of thing you are going to stand for some day in the theater. I loved your wanting it. But right now, while you are on your way up to the goal, is where I come in. Sort of mediator between your ideals and the box office. Of course you loved the fantasy. So did I, and I loved your wanting to do it. But it took vaudeville just one performance to decide that it wasn't ready for that kind of mysticism." "And you forty minutes." "You would never have backed it even over my O.K." "Then you don't realize how far your O.K. goes with me." "What is this," she smiled, "a mutual-admiration fete?" "I don't know," suddenly leaning toward her, reddening. "I can only speak for myself. Lilly--you're wonderful--" She chose to be casual, most effectively, too. "Indeed it is mutual. I need hardly to tell you what association with your office has meant to me. The romance of an organization like yours. The thrill of seeing it triple proportions in these few years. The fine stimulating something that comes with the acquisition of each new Amusement Enterprise Theater. The chats we have had over plays, play writing, producing. Your own fine aim. Oh, it has made bearable even the monotony of the secretarial end of it!" "I am afraid your secretarial services are about to be dispensed with." She placed a quick hand to her heart. "What do you mean?" He flecked his cigar, laughing over at her. "You're delicious. What could I mean except that you have outgrown your job?" "You--mean--" "I mean that I am going to officially place you in charge of the booking department at--well, your own idea of salary." "I--I don't know what to say." "Don't say anything." "You can't know--" "I do know." "You see, she is almost four now, and beautifully cared for, but, now that her little mind is beginning to unfold--I--Oh, to be able to afford a place of my own--next year--when she has outgrown Mrs. Dupree's. You see, I've never really had her. I've such plans for the day when I can have her rearing all to myself. I want life to unfold so naturally to her. Like a flower. That's why I am so terribly jealous of every day we spend apart. That's why you--you cannot know what it means to have you tell me that I've made good. It means that the time is nearing for me to have her with me, to--to--Well, you cannot--cannot know!"