'That's enough,' was all he said. 'I have asked and you have answered. On your own head be it!'
For a few seconds no one moved in the dead silence. The poet, half asleep, with his chin upon his chest, lurched and swayed, now one way, and now another. Herries's eyes flamed, as they looked at him, with the cold flame of disgust and hate.
'Your host is drunk,' he said to Alison, almost cavalierly. He had become icily cool, and the crisp tones of his business manner came to him, as though he stood in his own orderly office with a client in front of him. 'I cannot leave you here, you understand,' he continued, addressing her; 'you are in my relative's care, and I am her representative. You must leave this house—for the present, at least—and leave it with me.' He went to the door, and opened it, with a gesture that seemed to command rather than to solicit her exit. No one interfered, not even Nicol moved or spoke. With bowed head, Alison walked slowly from the room. And as she did so, the swaying figure of Burns, supine, fell prostrate on the table in a drunken sleep.
Out of doors it was raining, pouring with rain out of the black night sky. Neither Alison nor her companion could shelter themselves, and the gusty wind blew in their bent faces as they struggled along. A link-boy's torch flashed at the corner of the square, and at the end of Princes Street there was a pack of chairmen sheltering under a wall, for it was an Assembly night.
'I will see you under shelter and in safety,' said Herries, speaking for the first time. 'But after that I can never willingly see your face again. Do you understand?' He had to raise his voice against the wind and the hiss and patter of the rain.
'I understand,' said Alison; 'I expected nothing else,' she added proudly. Yet the pride was for him, not herself. He take that which was smirched and spoiled? Not a fair one, but the fairest of all, must be his, and how could she ever be fairest again—even though Herries should know all—stained to the soul as she felt, after those destroying, those damning hours in the squalid chamber of a libertine? It would be a relief, she thought, to part. Oh, let him go! let him go!
He called a chair and handed her into it, punctiliously instructing and paying the chairman. How it stabbed Alison that he should do this now. How often, in the happy dealings of a man with a girlish guest, he had paid such little sums on her behalf. But all that was over and done with. And in the pelting rain, and in the dark, wordless they parted.
Alison felt in her pocket for Nancy's key. At least she had that and her friend should be safe. She had seen it among a lot of untidy litter on a table in her prison, and had had the sense and courage to take it. That must be her reward.
* * * * *
At midnight, a white figure stood at Nancy's bedside. It was Alison, with a light in her hand. After a brief and curiously dry account of her adventure on her return home, she had gone to her room, but it was not to sleep.