Vic Wylie’s deep-set eyes brooded. “Kid, you have imagination. You feel deeply. That’s a blessing and a curse. You’re the kind’ll run into things in show business that’ll make you feel sick inside. It isn’t all music and lights and twinkling toes. That’s the mask. Every so often the mask slips, and you see behind it, and that’s when you’ll get sick inside. The old Pop Bartells make you want to cry. How about the young Pop Bartells? You had a bit in the _I Want Work_ platter. That was about the best cast you could assemble in this city. The best, kid. There isn’t one of them averages more than twenty-two dollars a week for the year. Some earn less than that. If they have a family, then there’s somebody to take care of them when they get sick. If they’re holed up in some shabby furnished room, they end up in the charity ward of a hospital.” Joe thought of the gay, light-hearted gathering in the producer’s outer office. His lips were stiff. “But they’re so—so—” “Sure. The grandest people in the world. Many of them are artists, real artists. That’s what makes it all the tougher.” The hand of this new Vic Wylie was on Joe’s shoulder. “Don’t let it tear you apart, kid. You can’t change it. It’s show business.” [Illustration: Vic Wylie said, “Don’t let it tear you apart, kid. You can’t change it. It’s show business.”] But show business had changed for Joe Carlin. Pop Bartell’s appearance at Miss Robb’s desk to ask for mail or telephone calls became poignant with pathos. And the loungers were no longer a happy-go-lucky group of care-free Bohemians, snapping their fingers at to-morrow and laughing at to-day. Knowledge had come to the boy, and with knowledge had come, also, a stark understanding. The bright chatter was all at once a little too bright and brittle, and the gaiety was tarnished. Listening and watching, he caught the hidden nervous tension, the moments when smiles faltered, the meaning of those swift glances to the closed door behind which Vic Wylie had shows in the making and parts to be given out. He knew now how unsure were all their to-morrows, how precarious, how uncertain. All the light-hearted magic of their easy fellowship was gone and they were stripped of their masks, of what Archie Munn called “a front.” They were ordinary human beings, men and women beset by the everyday worries of getting a job and never knowing how long the job would last.