ABOUT half-past ten it was John's brave good fortune to offer his arm to Miss Mackenzie, andescort her home. The night was chill and starry; all the way eastward the trees of thedifferent gardens rustled and looked black. Up the stone gully of Leith Walk, when theycame to cross it, the breeze made a rush and set the flames of the street-lamps quavering;and when at last they had mounted to the Royal Terrace, where Captain Mackenzie lived, agreat salt freshness came in their faces from the sea. These phases of the walk remainedwritten on John's memory, each emphasised by the touch of that light hand on his arm; andbehind all these aspects of the nocturnal city he saw, in his mind's-eye, a picture of thelighted drawing-room at home where he had sat talking with Flora; and his father, from theother end, had looked on with a kind and ironical smile. John had read the significance ofthat smile, which might have escaped a stranger. Mr. Nicholson had remarked his son'sentanglement with satisfaction, tinged by humour; and his smile, if it still was a thoughtcontemptuous, had implied consent.At the captain's door the girl held out her hand, with a certain emphasis; and John took itand kept it a little longer, and said, 'Good-night, Flora, dear, ' and was instantly thrown intomuch fear by his presumption. But she only laughed, ran up the steps, and rang the bell;and while she was waiting for the door to open, kept close in the porch, and talked to himfrom that point as out of a fortification. She had a knitted shawl over her head; her blueHighland eyes took the light from the neighbouring street-lamp and sparkled; and whenthe door opened and closed upon her, John felt cruelly alone.He proceeded slowly back along the terrace in a tender glow; and when he came toGreenside Church, he halted in a doubtful mind. Over the crown of the Calton Hill, to hisleft, lay the way to Colette's, where Alan would soon be looking for his arrival, and wherehe would now have no more consented to go than he would have wilfully wallowed in abog; the touch of the girl's hand on his sleeve, and the kindly light in his father's eyes, bothloudly forbidding. But right before him was the way home, which pointed only to bed, aplace of little ease for one whose fancy was strung to the lyrical pitch, and whose not veryardent heart was just then tumultuously moved. The hilltop, the cool air of the night, thecompany of the great monuments, the sight of the city under his feet, with its hills andvalleys and crossing files of lamps, drew him by all he had of the poetic, and he turned thatway; and by that quite innocent deflection, ripened the crop of his venial errors for thesickle of destiny