“So, if they give me the part I have concluded to approximate by thinking of my friendship for you, which is the most important event in my life.
“It ought to represent the state of mind in question. It’s got to. Do you think I could play that part convincingly? Why not? Because my idea of a person in love is that there is only one object of supreme affection. And I don’t care for anybody as much as I do for you. Why can’t I build on that?——”
Charmed, humiliated, thrilled by her candour, the humour of her appeal went straight home to Annan.
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.