Then the crowd would wait on, lessened by the few who lost heart and went on to other agencies. The assembly varied little in any of these refuges of the out-of-works. There you would find every specimen of stageland: the sprightly young man with an eye stimulated hopefully by sherry from the adjacent Bodega, dressed in the last fashionable suit left from his wardrobe, his waistcoat pocket bulging with pawntickets; the old actor with a blue chin, a red nose and a kindly smile, unctuously imparting the latest "wheeze" to a brother comedy-merchant; the hard-eyed woman of forty, rouged, smelling of spirits and patchouli, consumed with inward wrath because of the refusal of managers to entertain her applications for youthful parts; the fresh-looking girl with an air of country lanes and a pigtail, who nevertheless was bred and born at Stratford-at-Bow; the seedy advance-agent, vainly trying to adopt a managerial air; the plump and cheery chorister with no ambitions beyond thirty shillings a week and a long pantomime run; her male compeer nourishing a secret belief that he could "wipe the floor" with every tenor on the boards. Eleven, twelve, one o’clock, and still the patient crowd would linger on in the agents’ offices, chattering intermittently, giggling occasionally, desperately anxious all the same, eyes ever glancing toward the two shut doors. At one would come the unwelcome news, spoken by the young man who kept the accounts and made out the contracts: "Mr. Whitehead’s gone to lunch. Won’t be back to-day. No use waiting." How quickly the room emptied! Alexandra did not know that a goodly proportion of its habitués would quickly foregather for consultation and refreshment in Rule’s or the Bodega, where the atmosphere was redolent of alcoholic odors, curiously aromatic, sonorous with sustained conversation and the low chuckle of the comedians. One saw the same faces again after the luncheon hour, at Denton’s, at Hart’s, at Paul Stannard’s, a little less hopeful, a little more tired as the day went on. Paul Stannard had got Alexandra her engagement at De Freyne’s. She went to him again now. She liked him. He was a gentleman by birth, had drifted on to the stage, loathed it, could not get free of it, and ended by running a theatrical agency with fair success. He did not call all girls "dear," only the ones that liked it, and was more accessible to the rank and file than most agents. "I thought I had fixed you up with De Freyne," he said. "His show’s in for a long run. Couldn’t stick it?" "Mr. De Freyne told me to go." Alexandra was tired. She could hardly stand. "Sit down," invited Stannard. "Up against it?" "Well, I’ve nothing to do. It’s serious." "I’m sorry." He turned over the leaves of a big book on his desk. "And I can’t help you. Nothing’s doing, except a sextette for Rio." "Can’t I go?" she asked eagerly. "My God, no!"