“I was just figuring out the way to work it,” he said then, explaining his silence.  “I shall tell Goldsmith and Block (Block was the junior partner in the enterprise) that I’ve got hold of a costumer who agrees to deliver twelve costumes satisfactory to me, at an average of say, twenty per cent less than the ones Mrs. Goldsmith picked out.  If they aren’t satisfactory, it’s the costumer’s loss and we can buy these that Mrs. Goldsmith picked out, or others that will do as well, at Lessing’s.  I think that saving will be decisive with them.”

“But do you know a costumer?” Rose asked.

“You’re the costumer;” said Galbraith.  “You design the costumes, buy the fabrics, superintend the making of them.  As for the woman you speak of, we’ll get the wardrobe mistress at the Globe.  I happen to know she’s competent, and she’s at a loose end just now, because her show is closing when ours opens.  You’ll buy the fabrics and you’ll pay her.  And what profit you can make out of the deal, you’re entitled to.  I’ll finance you myself.  If they won’t take what we show them, why, you’ll be out your time and trouble, and I’ll be out the price of materials and the woman’s labor.”

“I don’t think it would be fair,” she said, and she found difficulty in speaking at all because of a sudden disposition of her teeth to chatter—­“I don’t think it would be fair for me to take all the profit and you take all the risk.”

“Well, I can’t take any profit, that’s clear enough,” he said; and she noticed now a tinge of amusement in his voice.  “You see, I’m retained, body and soul, to put this production over.  I can’t make money out of those fellows on the side.  But you’re not retained.  You’re employed as a member of the chorus.  And so far, you’re not even being paid for the work you’re doing.  As long as you work to my satisfaction there on the stage, nothing more can be asked of you.  As for the risk, I don’t believe it’s serious.  I don’t think you’ll fall down on the job, and I don’t believe Goldsmith and Block will throw away a chance to save some money.”

At the end of another silence, for Rose was speechless here, he went on expanding the plan a little further.  And if the assurances he gave her were essentially mendacious, he himself wasn’t exactly aware that they were.  It had often happened in productions of his, he said—­and this much was true—­that to save time or to accomplish some result he wanted, he put up a little of his own money for something and trusted to a prosperous event for getting it back.  It was clearly for the good of the show that the costumes for the sextette should be better than the ones Mrs. Goldsmith had picked out.  The only alternative way of getting them, to a knock-down and carry-away fight with Goldsmith and Block, which, even if it were successful, would weaken the effect of his next ultimatum, was the plan he now proposed to Rose.  She needn’t regard the money he put up as in any sense a personal loan to her.  They were simply cooperating for the good of the enterprise.  If her work turned out to be valuable, it was only right she should be paid for it.