They didn’t dine together at Annan’s house in Governor’s Place; or anywhere else. Eris tried desperately to get him on the telephone. A few minutes before train time she telegraphed: “Am leaving unexpectedly at three o’clock this afternoon for the Pacific Coast. Heart-broken on account of our engagement. Shall write from train. “Eris.” When Annan returned about six to order dinner and flowers, and to dress for the rôle of host, he found her telegram. Whatever is snatched away from man or beast instantly becomes disproportionately desirable. It was so with Annan. Suddenly he realised how much he wanted Eris. Really he had not thought much about this dinner, except immediately after their meeting at the _Looking Glass_. He had borne it in mind, impatiently the first day, pleasurably the second, with complacent equanimity thereafter. But he _had_ remembered it. For the moments of surprise and emotion so charmingly experienced in the projection room had little else except surprise for a foundation. Curiosity alone perpetuated them. To a young man agreeably immersed in his own affairs such episodes became incidents very quickly. Only an unexpected obstacle evokes afresh circumstances and emotions which have become vague. Her telegram did this. Disappointment, retrospection, regret, annoyance, sentimental impatience,--these in sequence possessed the young man as he sat holding her telegram. The only mitigation seemed to be in her statement concerning her broken heart. That flattered and helped. He was in no mood to dine out, but he didn’t want to dine at home alone. The conflict continued, full of sentimental indecision. It ended by his ringing for Mrs. Sniffen, ordering a cold bite on a tray, stripping to undershirt, chamber-robe, and slippers, and plunging into his novel, now well under way. * * * * * About eleven next morning, in similar attire, and with an electric fan whizzing in the room, he interrupted work long enough to open the envelope which Mrs. Sniffen brought him and which bore a special delivery stamp: “Dear Mr. Annan: “I tried to get you on the telephone up to the last moment. The disappointment seemed too much for me after I had waited so long. I could have wept. I didn’t; I don’t weep easily. But the vision of the evening we might have had haunts me every moment. “This is what happened. The directors who finance the Betsy Blythe Films suddenly decided to send us to the Coast for the new pictures. The reasons, I believe, are economical. “Can you imagine the company’s consternation? We had no time to prepare ourselves. If Mr. Smull and Betsy hadn’t stopped and taken me in Mr. Smull’s car I couldn’t have caught the train.