This was hardly true, but her touch at the steering wheel of her department was sensitive and sure. She could substitute for a quarantined team of jumping Arabs in Springfield, Illinois, with hardly more than a sleight of hand through her card index and a telegram or two. She knew that Memphis would not stand for a pickaninny act, and that the same was sure fire in Trenton, and was familiar with every house manager by long-distance-telephone voice. The department was more and more the well-oiled engine under a light steering hand that Lilly wielded well and wisely. Her judgment of the incoming reports of the various house managers, or a try-out act, although technically subject to Bruce Visigoth's signature, went usually unchallenged. She virtually was her department, particularly as the realty aspect of the enterprise came more and more to assume the proportions of big business. Within her little office of mahogany appointments she worked with an allotment of stenographers and clerks. She had an assistant, too; at least, she confiscated him from the press department--one Leon Greenberg, a young night student from New York University, with an enormous profile rendered positively carnivorous of thrust by his struggle up from First Street and Avenue A, which is mire with a pull to it. Her own capacity was unnamed. She was probably still down on the books as stenographer, although at fifty dollars a week now, and it was six years since she had taken a letter. It was a gray day in cold and tardy spring when Bruce Visigoth sent for her--one of those heavy afternoons that darken up at four o'clock and press thick as gravy against the windows. He was seated at his desk, hands laced at the back of his head and one foot propped on an open drawer, his male stenographer typing at the remote corner of a wide and rather luxuriously appointed office. Except for the green cone of light over him, the room was plushy with dusk. "About that play--" he began. "What play?" she said, seating herself in the entirely easy business manner she had with him. "'The Web.'" Her strong white hand out from its immaculate linen cuff lay unnervously on the glass top of his desk, but the fingers now began to lift in rotation. "Yes?" "I talked it over with my brother before he returned to Chicago yesterday. Thought the firm might be interested." "Yes?" "He doesn't see it." "He--wouldn't." He bent a sliver of ivory paper knife almost double. "I should have taken this matter up some time ago, but the sudden death of my sister Pauline's husband, Doctor Enlow--" "Mrs. Blair understands that." "And you?" "Well," she said, looking off and resolutely keeping her smile, "I guess it means 'The Web' must resume its journey again." "No, it doesn't." "Why?" "It means that I am going to produce it on my own." She slid to the edge of the chair, her hand closing over the desk edge. "Oh! Oh!" "Isn't that what you want?" "Yes." "Well, that is my reason."