Annan reddened very slightly, then laughed: “Kick my pants hard if ever I’m _that_, Mike. May the Lord defend me from solemnity and smugness!... Mike, I wish we could see more of each other.... Things worry me a lot sometimes. A fellow has got to believe in himself, yet complacency is destruction.... All this--you know what I mean--disconcerts a man.... I admit it. It’s come to a point where actually I don’t know whether my stuff is worth immortality, or a tinker’s dam, or zero. “Yet I feel I _can_ deliver the hootch.” “It’s hootch all right.” “Well--God knows.... Like the Mad Hatter--or was it the Rabbit?--I’ve used the best ingredient.” “There were crumbs in it,” said Coltfoot. “Besides, wood-alcohol isn’t a lubricant.” Thus from simile to allegory, to inference via insinuation--discourse in terms possible only between old friends of different species born in the same culture among fellow bacilli of their period. “Hang it all,” insisted Annan, “the world isn’t swimming in syrup!” “Nor in vinegar, Barry.” “I can’t see the sugar-candy aspect of a story,” said Annan. “All that lovey-lovey-sweetie-sweetie goo is as dead as Cleopatra.” “There _was_ a Cleopatra. And she loved. There _was_ beauty, brilliancy, ardour, wit, gaiety, pleasure----” “--_And_ the asp!” “Yes, but why star the asp? It bit only once. Why devote the whole story to ominous apprehension, the relentless approach of horror from beyond vast horizons? There were long intervals of sunlight and song in Cleopatra’s day. Why make of your book a monograph on poisons? Why turn it into a history of the asp? Why minutely construct a treatise on serpents? “Good Lord, Barry, when you’ve a good dinner served you at home, why slink to the nearest ash-can and rummage for putrid bones?” “After all, there _are_ a few million garbage cans in the world.” “Their contents are not nourishing. Why not leave such scraps to the degenerates so well known to the medical gentlemen who specialize in them?--to the Gauguins, Cezannes, Matisses among professors and students in that ghastly clinic where subject, operator and onlooker are scarcely distinguishable to the normal eye?” “Good heavens, what bitterness!” “Good God, what insanity!” “I must hew out my own way----” insisted Annan hotly. “Hew on! But follow the standard! Don’t lose sight of the standard----” “Standards change----” “Not The Cross!” There was a silence; then Barry said: “Is it the function of art to make people better by lying to them?” “It is not its function to make them worse by offering distorted truths.” “Does it hurt people to know the truer and less pleasant side of life?” “No; but it hurts them to dwell on it. That’s what modernism makes them do.” “Life is nine-tenths unpleasant.” “Then say so in a line. And in the rest of your story try to help people to endure those nine-tenths by forgetting them while they read about the other tenth.” “I’m not going to mutilate truth,” retorted Annan.