Secretly, Joe was weary of his present audience. They were too dull; too old; his power over them was too easy to exert; they made him feel like a second-rate performer. Glancing around the room to see who was looking at him, Joe perceived that a figure, vaguely familiar, had taken a seat at one of the small tables by the Twenty-Sixth street windows. It was that kid, Wilfred Pell, the white-faced kid; the kid with the funny look in his eyes. Joe was immediately interested. That kid had always teased his interest; it was hard to say why, because it was a footless sort of kid; he cut no ice. But Joe had never been able to make him give in. There was a bad streak in him all right; it instantly responded to Joe’s suggestion; but the kid would not let himself go. Joe had never been able to make him look sheepish. Not that it mattered a damn; still . . . why hadn’t he been able to? Now he looked as untidy as ever in his wrinkled, mouse-colored suit; it might almost have been the same suit he was wearing three years ago; and with much the same look in his eyes, but intensified by growing manliness; a sort of crazy, proud, hot look—what _was_ that look? If he felt like that, why the hell didn’t he let himself go? Obviously a damn fool; one of these, morbid, solitary kids; rotten! But Joe couldn’t dismiss him; there was something there that he couldn’t get. Joe saw that Wilfred had been watching him, though he quickly turned away his eyes when Joe looked. No greeting passed between the two. Wilfred’s look made Joe purr with gratification. Funny, that this insignificant kid had that effect, when Cooper Gillett’s ill-concealed admiration only bored him. What a contrast between the two of them. There was he, Joe, handsome, elegantly-dressed; sitting as an equal with some of the best-known men in New York, telling them things: and there was that other kid, just the same age, untidy and sallow-cheeked, sitting alone and unregarded, looking out of place in the swell joint. And Wilfred showed that he felt the contrast. You could almost see him grind his teeth when he looked at Joe. The kid hated him, yet he was crazy about him in a way; while his mouth was ugly with a sneer, his eyes had a certain slavish look in them, that Joe was familiar enough with. Joe looked in one of the mirrors and plumed himself, aware that this would make the kid feel worse.