He was walking away from Princes Street to his own home now, and the decent grey vacuity of the streets soothed him. If he only had the sense to stay in the district of orderly houses where he belonged, and behaved accordingly, and did not go talking with people beneath him, he could not come to harm. But that would not alter the fact that he had once come to harm. As he passed the house at the corner of his street he saw that a "To Let" board had been put up since the morning. He wondered why the Allardyces were leaving it. He had been at school with the boys. He and Willie Allardyce had tied tenth in the mile race at the last school sports in which he had taken part before he left the Academy. He remembered how they had all stood at the starting-post in the windy sunshine, straight lads in their singlets and shorts, utterly uninvolved in anything but this clean thing of running a race; the women were all behind the barriers, tolerated spectators, and one was too busy to see them; his clothing had been stiff with sweat, and when he wriggled his body the cool air passed between his damp vest and his damp flesh, giving him a cold, pure feeling. Well, he was not a boy any longer. The Allardyces were moving; everything was changing this way and that; nothing would be the same again.... The solidity of his father's house, the hall into which he let himself, with its olive green wallpaper, its aneroid barometer, an oil-painting of his mother's father, Mr. Laurie of the Bank of Scotland, made him feel better. He reminded himself that he belonged to one of the most respected families in Edinburgh, and that there was no use getting upset about things that nobody would ever find out, and he went into the dining-room and poured himself out a glass of whisky, looking round with deep satisfaction at his prosperous surroundings. There was a very handsome red wallpaper, and a blazing fire that chased the tawny lights and shadows on the leviathanic mahogany furniture and set a sparkle on the thick silver and fine glass on the spread table. "Mhm!" he sighed contentedly, and raised the tumbler to his lips. But the smell of the whisky recalled to him the flavour of that Piccadilly woman's kisses. The room seemed to contract and break out into soiled pink valances. He put down his glass, groaned, and made his mind blank, and was immediately revisited by the thought of Ellen's face on her spilt red hair. An ingenious thought struck him, and he hurried from the room. He met one of his sisters in the passage, and said, "Away, I want to speak to father." It was true that she was not preventing him from doing so, but the gesture of dominance over the female gave him satisfaction.