e, a moving heap of
frayed velvet and shabby plush. Lily passed by with great dignity. Next,
she came to the big agent, with offices in Berlin and London ... the
ting-ting of telephones, the tick-tack of typewriters all day ... business
pure and simple, an exchange for supple loins, swelling biceps, muslin
skirts, pigeon's eggs ... a sheaf of stars who, from there, radiated over
Australia, America, England, the Eastern and Western Trusts, Bill and
Boom, Harrasford, the continent. Lily felt a little ill at ease as she
entered--she had a pain in the pit of her stomach, as when she used to
expect a smacking--and again in the private office crammed with papers and
registers, when alone with the agent, who looked at her card, he seated,
she standing. Then, suddenly:

"Lily? Miss Lily? Your price is two hundred francs a week, I believe."

"What!" said Lily. "With a bike and a maid?"

"It's what you had at Maidstone, so I was told."

"What a lie!" said Lily. "Three hundred francs is the lowest I've ever
had. I'll show you my contracts."

"Don't trouble," said the agent. "I thought ... we can get plenty at that
price, you know ... in your style...."

"In my style, perhaps ... but not me."

"Pooh, the audience doesn't know the difference." And he started looking
through a register, turning over the pages and repeating mechanically,
like a refrain or a lullaby, "The audience doesn't care a hang; it's all
the same to the audience." And, suddenly, with his hand flat on the open
book and the other ready to take up the pen, with a piercing eye fixed
upon Lily, "I can give you a month at a thousand francs ... they want a
girl in tights ... at Lisbon."

"Lisbon?" said Lily. "That's at the Colosseo. A thousand francs to go to
the Colosseo, with one's luggage and a maid?"

"Well?" broke in the agent. "And what do you want a maid for, you
extravagant little beast? Why not your maid's family while you're about
it? A thousand francs: will you take it? I've got some one who will, if
you don't."

Lily had to say yes or no quickly. Her forehead was wrinkled with the
effort of turning the francs into shillings, the shillings into pounds.
She consulted her book, like an artiste who doesn't know, who may not be
free, for a whole month. She lowered her chin in her tie, but without
smiling ... had a cramp in her stomach, rather ... at a pinch, by leaving
Glass-Eye in Paris.... After Lisbon, one generally had Madrid and
Barcelona and ret