There was a steadying of their existence. She took her work seriously, and rested as much as possible during the day. In the evenings he missed her, and he detested having his dinner at half-past six. But the discomfort was a relief and gave him a much needed sharpening of the wits. Every night he met her at the theater and made more acquaintances in it. He applied his theory of the eruption of gold to them, and, studying them for that purpose, was amazed to find how little different they were from Mr. Copas and the miserable John Lomas. Copas had been untouched by the eruption. These men, and particularly Henry Butcher and Matilda's manager, were Copas varnished and polished. Beneath the varnish they were exactly the same; self-important, self-centered, entirely oblivious of life outside the theater, utterly unheeding of everything outside their profession that could not be translated into its cant and jargon, childishly jealous, greedy of applause, sensitive of opinion, boys with the appetites and desires of grown men, human beings whose development had been arrested, who, in a healthy society, would be rogues and vagabonds, or wandering adventurers, from sheer inability to accept the restrictions and discipline imposed by social responsibility. They were cruelly placed, for they were in a position needing adult powers, having audiences night after night vaster than could be gathered for any divine or politician or demagogue; they had to win their own audiences, for no theater was subsidized; and when they had won them they were mulcted in enormous sums for rent; they were sucked, like the other victims of the eruption, into the machine, the zoetrope, and being there, in that trap and lethal chamber of spontaneity, they had to charm their audiences, with nothing more than the half-ideas, the sentimental conventions, the clipped emotions of their fellow sufferers. They were squeezed out of their own natures, forced into new skins, could only retain their positions by the successful practice of their profession, and were forced to produce plays and shows out of nothing, being robbed both of their Copas-like delight in their work and of their material for it. Their position was calamitous and must have been intolerable without the full measure of applause and flattery bestowed on them. Clearly it was not through the theater that Old Mole could find the outlet he was seeking.