During the month that had gone he had been almost constantly at her side. The fact that one light may be replaced by another had not at first occurred to him. Presently the ease with which such substitution can be effected had mystified him very much. He was not prepared for anything of the kind. He had arranged to be a gloomy, disappointed man. He kept telling himself that if Sylvia had stuck to him he would have been true to her his whole life through. But she had not stuck to him, and the withdrawal of herself had left existence so empty that, unknown even to him, Nature had been filling the vacuum which she abhors. In this, Nature had been greatly aided. Fanny Price was a remarkably fetching young girl. To a man out of court and consequently out of sorts the companionship of a pocket Venus is tonifying in the extreme. It is not merely that, it is recuperative. It banishes the blues. It establishes a new court, and with it a new code of its own. The censorious allege that this is all wrong. It may be that they are right. But Nature is not censorious. Nature is not even ethical. She has no standards of right, no canons of wrong. What she does have is her way. A saint may defy her. Annandale was not that by a long shot. He was simply a human being, one that had been punished, and, as he thought, unjustly punished, for that which might have been condoned. Injustice humiliates. Saints may welcome humiliation, but human beings resent it. Over the emptiness which Sylvia had created there brooded therefore two things. One was darkness, the other pique. In the light which Fanny upheld it seemed to Annandale that they might be dispersed. This idea, which he regarded as his very own, and consequently as highly original, was not his in the least. It was Nature prompting him to fill the vacuum which she so dislikes. Instigated by her, Annandale invited Fanny up a stair and into a tower, a place remote, aloof, furnished with seats for just two. Fanny had not been there before. She had heard, though, of its aloofness; it was regarded as a dangerous spot. But Fanny was a brave girl. Besides, Annandale was at his worst, and even at his best was not very alarming. The ascent effected, Fanny peeped from a casement. "Why," she exclaimed, "you can see everywhere!" She looked about. "But no one can see you." Assured of that, she produced a little gold box. On the back were her initials in jewels. She opened it, took a cigarette and lit it. "Will you have one?" she asked. "This is a deuced nice case," said Annandale. Fanny puffed and smiled. "A present, I suppose." "Yes. But you must not ask from whom." Annandale looked out at the landscape, then in at the girl. "There is something else I want to ask." So grave was his tone that Fanny deployed for action. "Will you marry me?" Though Fanny had deployed, the shot bowled her over. Into one of the chairs she dropped. Already Annandale had captured the other. "Will you?"