"I wish she wasn't there," he said to himself as he walked down, alone, to the gate at a punctual ten o'clock. Somehow his delight in his love for Vivien, and in hers for him, was being marred. Ever so little, ever so faintly, yet still a little, his romance was turning to duty. A delightful duty, of course, one in which his whole heart was engaged, but still no longer just the one thing--the spontaneous voluntary thing--which filled his life. It had now an opposite. Besides all else that it was, it had also--even now, even before that marriage so slow in coming--taken on the aspect of the right thing. In the remote corners of his mind--banished to those--hovered the shadowy image of its opposite. Quite impossible that the image should put on bones and flesh--should take life! Yes, Harry was sure of that. But even its phantom presence was disturbing. "I thought I'd got rid of all that!" Some such protest, yet even vaguer and less formulated, stirred in his thoughts. He conceived that he had become superior to temptation. Had he? For he was objecting to being tempted. Who tempted him? Did she--or only he himself, the man he was? The question hung doubtful, and thereby pressed him the closer. He flattered himself that he knew women. What else had he to show for a good deal of time--to say nothing of wear and tear of the emotions? Here was a woman whose meaning, whose feeling towards himself, he did not know. Andy Hayes was free the next afternoon--his half-holiday. Harry picked him up at his lodgings and carried him with him to Nutley. Harry was glad to have him, glad to hear all about Gilbert Foot and Co., even more glad to see his own position through Andy's eyes. Andy's vision was always so normal, so sane, so simple; his assumptions were always so right. A man really had only to live up to Andy's assumptions to be perfectly right. He assumed that a man was honest, straight, single-minded--unreservedly and exclusively in love with the girl he was going to marry. Why, of course a man was! Or why marry her? Even foolishly in love with her? Rather spoonily, as some might think? Andy, perhaps, went so far as to assume that. Well, it was a most healthy assumption--eminently right on the practical side; primitive perhaps, but tremendously right. "I'll take Miss Vintry off your hands. Don't be afraid about that!" laughed Andy. "I don't know that you'll be allowed to. You're no end of a favourite of Vivien's. She often talks about you. In fact I think I'm a bit jealous, Andy!" Andy's presence seemed to restore his balance, which had seemed shaken--even if very slightly. He found himself again dwelling on the charms of Vivien, recalling her pretty ways and the shy touches of humour that sometimes ornamented her timidity. "I asked her the other day--I was playing the fool, you know--what she would do if I forsook her. What do think she said?" Andy was prepared for anything brilliant, but, naturally, unable to suggest it.