“I thought Eris would break with Albert Smull,” drawled Rosalind. “What a sketch he is!--schmoozing about and telling everybody he had to let her go! Betsy’s got him buffaloed. He’s afraid of her parents; that’s all that holds Albert.... I get banged around a lot, but Mom’s a pretty good policewoman, and God help the Johnny with fancy intentions towards her little Rosie.” She looked at Coltfoot, standing beside her, with faintest malice. Coltfoot’s sophisticated retort was a bored smile. But it was to Annan he spoke, asking him how his work was going. “What do you care how my story is going?” said Annan, laughing. “You’re an enemy to realism, and that’s all I write.” “Realism! You don’t know what it means,” said Coltfoot bluntly. “What you write isn’t realism. If you want realism, study your pretty friend Eris! She’s real. Everything about her is genuine. Study her story. That’s realism. Not as _you_ once wrote it,” he added disgustedly, “but devoid of ugliness and tragedy and sob-stuff. _She_ doesn’t whimper. She doesn’t know how to pose. The _beau geste_ and the attitude mean nothing to her. Sob-stuff is wasted on her. Health never snivels. Do you get that, Barry? _Health!_ That’s the key. And by the Eternal, it is the usual, not the unusual that is wholesome. The great majority are healthy. That’s realism. And when health is your keynote you have beauty, too. And _that_ is Realism, my clever friend!” “Am I real because I am beautiful, Mike?” drawled Rosalind, “or beautiful because I am real?” So these three parted with the light jest of Rosalind floating between them in the sunshine. But Annan went on, a trifle out of countenance, to keep a rendezvous with Eris at the Ritz. * * * * * At luncheon he said abruptly: “The stuff I do, Eris--you know I’d like your opinion--I mean while I’m doing it.... Or rather, I’d like to talk over the story with you, first, before I begin it.” The girl looked up over her peach-ice. Her eyes were very clear and still. “What I want,” he explained, “is a perfectly fresh eye--a fresh mind and a--a bystander’s point of view.... Not that I don’t most deeply respect you as an artist----” “It would make me very happy,” she said, “to have your confidence in such things.” “Well, I have a lot of confidence in your judgment. I’d like to consult you.... Perhaps--I don’t know--no man does know when his nose is too close to his work--but I’m rather afraid I’ve been getting away from things--facts--” Her eyes grew tenderly humorous: “Whatever you get away from, Barry, you can’t ever get away from me. I’m the Nemesis called in to chasten you and clip those irresponsible wings.... I know a little about wings. I used to dream of them. Do you remember I once told you?” “About your flight. And how you found the god of Wisdom seated all alone on the peak of Parnassus dissecting a human heart?” “So you remember.”