She was paid for her work five hundred dollars a week. She was offered twice as much to sign for another year. Then twice as much again. To Annan she wrote: “I had to tell them that circumstances beyond my control might interfere. I meant children, darling, but did not consider it necessary to be more definite.” * * * * * As for Annan, excepting his brief journeys to the Coast, he passed a miserable, apathetic, unreal winter. To Coltfoot it was painfully plain where was the true and only source of the boy’s inspiration. Everything else now appeared to be only a sort of native ability polished with usage to cleverness where technical fluency and journalistic nimbleness in narrative did brilliant duty for the real thing. For a few days, after being with Eris, enough of her in him lasted so that he could get on with his novel. Then he needed her again. But he realised his necessity only when he had gone on for a while without her. Dark days came for the boy; incredulity, alarm, chagrin, the struggle renewed, doubt, helplessness, and the subconscious cry for her, never written nor voiced, yet, somehow heard by her at the edge of the other ocean. Always the occult appeal was answered; always she responded in a passion of tenderness and abnegation--her promise that the days of separation were drawing to their end, that soon she would come to him forever. She came when May was ending. * * * * * He thought she seemed a trifle taller;--had never dreamed she was as lovely a thing;--yet should have been prepared--for always she had been a series of enchanting revelations. It transpired that she still had a few days left of her career--spots to fill in with “Eastern stuff,” where the continuity called for it--a location here, a set or two to be knocked together, nothing exacting. Then the professional career of Eris was to be “irised out.” “Never!” repeated Annan, holding her so that he could see deeply in her grey eyes. And saw a tiny image there, reflected--the miniature of himself. “Well,” she murmured, “that event is with God, darling. But I don’t think there’s much doubt, because I love children.... And anyway----” She lifted her eyes to her lover, smiled, recognising her destiny. After dinner that evening, in his study, he sat at his desk with the typed manuscript over which he had agonised all winter. Eris, perched on the arm of his chair, read it over his shoulder, page after page. “It seems to be getting on, darling,” she ventured. “Well, I’ve got to talk it over with you. I _want_ it to be the real thing.” “You’ll make it so.” He looked up at her. In his eyes there was a sort of tragic curiosity. Her heart seemed to stand still for an instant. Suddenly he smiled, bent and touched his lips to her betrothal ring. “‘_Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme_,’” he murmured. “And these things are in _you_.”