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"Well, you look about sixteen! Where’s your kiddy car?"

She was visibly pleased; she lingered. He felt that he should say something more, something confident and easy–he had first met her when she was struggling for bits in New York. At the moment a tray slid up and Stella put a cocktail glass into his hand.

"Everybody’s afraid, aren’t they?" he said, looking at it absently. "Everybody watches for everybody else’s blunders, or tries to make sure they’re with people that’ll do them credit. Of course that’s not true in your house," he covered himself hastily. "I just meant generally in Hollywood. "

Stella agreed. She presented several people to Joel as if he were very important. Reassuring himself that Miles was at the other side of the room, Joel drank the cocktail.

"So you have a baby?" he said. "That’s the time to look out. After a pretty woman has had her first child, she’s very vulnerable, because she wants to be reassured about her own charm. She’s got to have some new man’s unqualified devotion to prove to herself she hasn’t lost anything. "

"I never get anybody’s unqualified devotion," Stella said rather resentfully.

"They’re afraid of your husband. "

"You think that’s it?" She wrinkled her brow over the idea; then the conversation was interrupted at the exact moment Joel would have chosen.

Her attentions had given him confidence. Not for him to join safe groups, to slink to refuge under the wings of such acquaintances as he saw about the room. He walked to the window and looked out toward the Pacific, colorless under its sluggish sunset. It was good here–the American Riviera and all that, if there were ever time to enjoy it. The handsome, well-dressed people in the room, the lovely girls, and the–well, the lovely girls. You couldn’t have everything.

He saw Stella’s fresh boyish face, with the tired eyelid that always drooped a little over one eye, moving about among her guests and he wanted to sit with her and talk a long time as if she were a girl instead of a name; he followed her to see if she paid anyone as much attention as she had paid him. He took another cocktail–not because he needed confidence but because she had given him so much of it. Then he sat down beside the director’s mother.

"Your son’s gotten to be a legend, Mrs. Calman–Oracle and a Man of Destiny and all that. Personally, I’m against him but I’m in a minority. What do you think of him? Are you impressed? Are you surprised how far he’s gone?"

"No, I’m not surprised," she said calmly. "We always expected a lot from Miles. "

"Well now, that’s unusual," remarked Joel. "I always think all mothers are like Napoleon’s mother. My mother didn’t want me to have anything to do with the entertainment business. She wanted me to go to West Point and be safe. "

"We always had every confidence in Miles. " …

He stood by the built-in bar of the dining room with the good-humored, heavy-drinking, highly paid Nat Keogh.

"–I made a hundred grand during the year and lost forty grand gambling, so now I’ve hired a manager. "

"You mean an agent," suggested Joel.

"No, I’ve got that too. I mean a manager. I make over everything to my wife and then he and my wife get together and hand me out the money. I pay him five thousand a year to hand me out my money. "

"You mean your agent. "

"No, I mean my manager, and I’m not the only one–a lot of other irresponsible people have him. "

"Well, if you’re irresponsible why are you responsible enough to hire a manager?"