"Yes, of course. There is me and there are other girls. But the men will be few. They will be elderly, I think, and I think, too, tame enough to eat out of her hand." "You think, then, that I am out of the running?" Fanny did not answer. She was drinking the squash. When she put it down she put with it the subject. It bored her. "Are you going to be here long?" she asked. Until a moment before Annandale had been wavering. But now his mind was made up. Or he thought it was. "No. I am off tomorrow." "Where to?" "The North Woods, perhaps. I am not sure." "If you are not sure, you cannot be in any very tearing haste. Why not stop a day or two longer and take me about?" Annandale looked at her. In the look was surprise; inquiry, too. "Yes. Why not?" Annandale's look deepened into a stare. "Now, don't be stupid," said Fanny, to whom such stares were familiar. "I am not trying to get up a flirtation with you. But I must have someone to talk to." "I like to hear you talk." "Yes; men always like nonsense." "Only from a pretty girl, though." "Do you know," said Fanny, rising from beneath the big parasol, "the waiter didn't bring the raspberries. No matter now, though. I must go and find mother. This is no place for her to be out alone." CHAPTER VIII TWO IN A TURRET From a back gallery of the Casino a narrow stair leads to a tower. Up that stair Annandale one afternoon invited Fanny Price. A fortnight had gone, two weeks of dressing and undressing, of dinners, dances and dips; a succession of mellow mornings; long, green afternoons, dusks stabbed by sudden stars and nights lit by a moon that painted the ocean, penetrated the shadows, checkered the underbrush with silver spots. But now, though the mornings were as mellow and the afternoons as green, though in the air the same madness subsisted and the nights were as languid as before, verandas were emptying, there were wide spaces where once were thick crowds. The end of the season had come. In the procession of these things Annandale had put the North Woods from him; he had put, too, the thought of journeying abroad. With them he had put also any hope that Sylvia would signal him back. For awhile the hope had persisted, as the light of a candle persists. Then it had dwindled, flickered and sunk. That is the way with hope. Though sometimes it is snuffed. You are in darkness. But through that darkness occasionally another light will be upheld. It may not, perhaps, be intended for you, but it may enable you to see. Aided by another light, Annandale had begun to discern his way. He should, of course, have remained in darkness. To darkness, were this fiction, he would be condemned. But this is not fiction. The drama with which these pages deal is documented from life. It was Fanny who held the light.