When she awoke, it was with a confused, unpleasant feeling, and the sound of voices in her ears. The room was dark, but a line of light showed under the door. Alison sat up and listened. A curious, nightmare-like sense of danger was upon her, indefinably oppressive. Her ears were acute. She heard Nancy’s voice, and a man’s voice, unmistakably. Clearness came to her, though her temples throbbed and the drug she had been given buzzed in her head. She slipped to the floor, searched for, but could not find her shoes, groped for her wrapper, and threw it over her shoulders. She crept to the door and lifted the latch noiselessly. The passage lamp was out, but the parlour was in a glow of brightness. The door had swung open with its old trick, and a stream of light came from it. In brilliant relief the little room and all it held stood out. And, in the circle of light, unconscious of all save each other, they stood—the tempter and the tempted. And behind Alison the big wag-at-the-wall clock, with a guilty twang, struck one. One of Robert Burns’s great labouring hands was clenched, and he leaned heavily on the table with it. Alison could see the veins in it throb and swell with the hot, ungovernable blood. His other arm held Nancy—Nancy, whose little trembling hands covered her face—and who turned, as Alison watched her, to hide it against the man’s powerful shoulder. The poet’s face was in shadow, for it was bent over the woman. He spoke, but his voice was low and thick; Alison could not catch the words. She only looked at them a moment, just till the clock struck. Then they moved with a start, and she also moved forward, until she too stood in the circle of light. Petrified, the lovers saw her both at once,—staring, chapfallen, as though they beheld a spirit: only a girl, indeed, with bare feet, and in her nightgown, sleep still in her wide eyes and curls scattered on her shoulders, but hedged about with the immutable dignity of innocence, and strong with the strength of right. She walked straight up to Nancy, and with a little jerk of effort took her into her own arms from the man’s embrace, facing him boldly. ’It is too late for visitors here, sir,’ she said simply. ’Mrs. Maclehose would have you go.’ The poet’s arms dropped to his side and his jaw fell. His sun-browned face had become quite pale, and the words which stammered on his lips would not get themselves spoken. When he moved it was to fumble for his hat. Then he made for the door, without a look or word for those he left; and it might be said that he slunk, then and there, from the room and from the house. Nancy had slipped from Alison’s arms and lay on the floor in a little huddled heap, moaning. Alison tried to raise her, but she would not rise. ’Come, Nancy, come to bed,’ whispered the girl. ’You are cold—you are shaking.’ She lifted her, and then Nancy stood up, staring round her with miserable, unseeing eyes—deadly pale, and utterly dishevelled.