For here was this girl innocently proposing to analyse and use her friendship for him to aid her in her profession;--the very thing that he had been doing so cynically. Every word she wrote was helping him, professionally. Every line he had written in reply was evidently a source of professional inspiration to her. It was not flattering to him, but it was funny. And, somehow, it knocked sentiment out of his letters: knocked out the letters, too, toward the end of the year. The anesthetic of old Doctor Time is certain and irresistible. Sooner or later constancy fades, memory evaporates, humanity succumbs. Only the dog resists the anesthetic of old Doctor Time. * * * * * By February Annan had been in arrears for two months; and the effort to re-open the correspondence bored him. Pigeon-holed, the memory of her would keep sufficiently fresh until such time--if ever--she was resurrected in the flesh and came again into the trail he travelled through life. He heard of her occasionally when he encountered Rosalind, who corresponded with Betsy. Eris was being favourably discussed on the Coast. * * * * * In March a Betsy Blythe film was shown at _The Looking Glass_,--following that first film, parts of which he had seen the previous autumn in the projection room. Once or twice he attempted to see the new picture--rather as a sort of obligation--but the place was crowded. Somehow time passed very swiftly for Annan; and when again he thought about it the picture was gone; and a new Betsy Blythe picture had replaced it,--playing to a crowded house as before;--and Annan went once, failed to get in, and let it slip his memory. Not that his conscience did not meddle with his complacency at times. It did. Her last three letters still remained unanswered. But his novel was the vital, supreme thing which crowded out all else--even the several pretty and receptive girls whose stellar orbits had intersected his during the winter and early spring. The joy of literary achievement was his chiefest pleasure; its perils his excitement, its fatigue the principal sleep-inducer that sent him at last to a tardy pillow. Coltfoot read a typed copy. “It’ll be the making of you, I suppose,” he said, “but it’s all wrong, Barry. Popular and punk!” “Why the devil do you say that?” “It _is_ wrong.” They were dining at Annan’s _à deux_, and had strolled into the living-room with their cigars. “You sit down, Mike, and tell me why my book is popular and punk!” said Annan wrathfully. Coltfoot dropped onto the piano stool, sounded a few dissonances evolved by a master-modernist; sneered. “Barry,” he said, “if art isn’t wholesome it’s only near-art. What is good is also healthy. If art is good it is sane, always; and always beautiful.” “I’ve heard that song you sing. It’s an ancient rag, Mike.”