“Yes,” she said, laughing, “--and you’re so funny!” “Oh, I’m a great wit,” he admitted. “Well, little pilgrim, you require sleep if I don’t.... I think I’ll go in and start a story.... Or read.... _Your_ story is just beginning, isn’t it?” She ventured a timid jest: “_You_ finished my story for me, didn’t you?” “I did. When it’s published, and you read it, you’ll never stop guying me, I suppose.” She still ventured pleasantries: “So you didn’t tell how I left the Park and walked straight into an engagement, did you?” “My dear, I bumped you off to sneak-music. It goes, you know, with my clients. They wouldn’t stand for what Miss Blythe did. Neither would the _Planet_. I’d get the hook.” They both were laughing when he said good-night. He went into his room but did not light the lamp. For a long while he sat by the open window looking out into the darkness of Governor’s Place. It probably was nothing he saw out there that brought to his lips a slight, recurrent smile. The bad habit of working late at night was growing on this young man. It is a picturesque habit, and one of the most imbecile, because sound work is done only with a normal mind. He made himself some coffee. A rush of genius to the head followed stimulation. He had a grand time, revelling with pen and pad and littering the floor with inked sheets unnumbered and still wet. His was a messy genius. His plot-logic held by the grace of God and a hair-line. Even the Leaning Tower of Pisa can be plumbed; and the lead dangled inside Achilles’ tendon when one held the string to the medulla of Annan’s stories. * * * * * He rose at his usual early hour, rather pallid, and parched by too many pipes. When he left the house for down-town, Mrs. Sniffen reported Eris still sound asleep. So Annan went away to deposit seven thousand words with Coltfoot. “Off the bat just like that,” he said, tossing the untidy bundle onto Coltfoot’s desk. “You mean that you did this story last night after we left?” demanded Coltfoot. “That’s what I do, Mike,--sometimes. And sometimes I’m two or three weeks on this sort of thing. I think I’ll go back and do another. I feel like it.” “Probably,” remarked the other, “this is punk.” “Probably not,” said Annan serenely. “Are you lunching?” “Probably not if I read this bunk first. Is it really up to your worst level?” “Your readers will wail like a bunch of banshees over it. It’s dingy, squalid, photographic. What more does the Great American Ass require?” “That’s his fodder,” admitted Coltfoot. “Now g’wan outa here, you licensed push-cart bandit!... By the way, how’s the park-bencher this morning?” “Asleep when I left the house.” He seated himself sideways on Coltfoot’s desk: “Mike, do you know she’s exceedingly pretty?” “How should I know?... But trust you to pick that kind----”