“Are you alive?” the producer whispered hoarsely. “Let me feel your arm. You are alive? Then why don’t you pour life into it? You’re not talking to a broom. This is a scene between two human beings, mother and son. You’re not Charlie McCarthy; you’re Dick Davis.” Joe knew he was wooden. He tried to take the knot out of his throat, tried and tried.... They ran through the scene, again and again. Sweat wilted the boy’s collar and he pulled off his tie. He no longer knew whether he was good or bad. And then suddenly Wylie was smiling, Wylie was chuckling, Wylie was beaming. “Kid, that was the knockout. Now you’re giving it to me. I knew we’d pull the cork. Carry it on.” Stella Joyce, as unruffled as though she had just begun to read, carried on the script. “Pretty.” The wild Mr. Wylie was actually jovial. “But—not quite. A little more hokum. Just a little, Stella.” Stella gave the script a shade more heart throb. Wylie closed his eyes and became beatific. Joe waited for his cue. He began to read: Dick: We’re in this fight together, Mother. We’re partners. At least we’re supposed to be. But we can’t be partners when you carry all the load and I just ride along. I— “Please!” Wylie wailed. “Don’t you get this scene at all? Your mother’s fighting the world to keep her little home together and you want to help. Do you have to read it as though you’re arguing to put one more pickle in the picnic lunch?” A beaming face was transformed to fury. “Do you have to insult me with such a performance?” Joe laid down the script “I can’t read to-day, Mr. Wylie.” “What?” Wylie seemed to freeze with horror. “I’m not in the humor.” Wylie’s moan was that of a man whose soul was in agony. “He’s not in the humor! An actor, and he must be in the humor. Do you think an actor is somebody who can read his lines only when the wind’s in the east? Suppose Munson were listening and this was an audition? Suppose this script were on the air? Suppose—” “Vic,” said Stella. Wylie glared. “Would you like to produce this show?” “He heard something to-day that hit him hard.” “We all hear things that hit us hard.” Stella said: “He got the truth about Pop Bartell.” “I see,” Vic Wylie said slowly. Madness went out of him. He picked up Joe’s discarded script, folded it once, and ran a fingernail along the crease. When he spoke his voice was quiet. “That’s all.” Joe was bleak. Show business had a code, a stern, rigid code. “The show must go on.” Generations of actors had lived that code, but he had failed. Stella was walking toward the outer office. Wylie’s voice halted him. “Come back, kid.” Joe went back.