Coltfoot, in the absence of Eris, began to frequent Annan. A rudderless ship, a homeless pup, a gasless flivver--these similes haunted him whenever he beheld the quenched features of Barry Annan. Annan had been candid with him. It was love, he admitted, that knocked every other ambition out of him. And, at first, Coltfoot thought so, although in his case with Rosalind, love was proving a stimulus to effort amazing, resembling inspiration. But gradually a disturbing explanation for Annan’s idleness forced itself upon Coltfoot. The boy’s motive power seemed to be suspended. Except for the personal pleasure Annan had taken in his mental acrobatics, there never had been anything inspired in his work until he began his latest novel--still merely blocked in. But this story had in it, carefully and skilfully laid, a deep-bedded foundation of truth. And work on it began from the day that Eris had promised to become his wife. Through all the upsetting excitement of the boy’s courtship, the inception of the story had produced nothing material. In the glow of glorious certainty it had flowered under the girl’s tender ministry. In her absence, now, all growth ceased. It was a disturbing explanation that seemed to force itself upon Coltfoot,--that, in Annan, there was nothing creative except through the vitality of this girl. Or that the living germ was in her; and that Annan was merely the medium for transplantation--adequate soil skilfully mixed for culture of seeds developed in the entity of Eris. * * * * * He said one day to Annan: “How far in any creative work Eris would go if she had the chance, I couldn’t prophesy.... I saw some of the continuity of that last Smull picture she made----” Annan looked up sharply. “--It is a noble piece of creative acting,” said Coltfoot in a deliberate voice. After a silence Annan said: “She shall have every chance in the world.” “The trouble is, with such a girl, that she is likely to lend herself to her husband’s career.... And ignore her own.... There is in her a breadth of generosity I have seen very seldom, Barry,--perhaps never before.... And she is very much in love.” “Do you suppose I’d accept any such sacrifice, Mike?” demanded Annan impatiently. “You may have no option. She is a curious girl. Enormously capable. Perfectly normal. Intensely human.... She is the balanced type which civilisation is supposed to breed. And seldom does. That is why the ordinary becomes extraordinary; why symmetry is such a rarity.... We’re a twisted lot, Barry. We never notice it until we see somebody who not only was born straight, but who has continued to grow that way.” * * * * * The elements of ignition began to collect in Destiny’s dust-pan toward the end of the month. Camille Armand, Gowns, 57th Street, sent Betsy Blythe an estimate for her personal adornment in the proposed production of a super-picture to be called _The Devil’s Own_.