“Why?  Oh, why?  It was through their deceit.  Oh, Harry! there is not such harm done that you cannot retrieve.”

“No,” he said, emphatically.  “Understand what you are asking.  My safeguard of an unbroken word is gone!  The longing for that stuff—­ accursed though I know it—­is awakened.  Nothing but shame at giving way before these poor fellows that I have preached temperance to withholds me at this very moment.”

“But it does withhold you!  Oh, Harold!  You know you can be strong.  You know God gives strength, if you would only try.”

“I know you say so.”

“Because I know it.  Oh, Harold! try my way.  Do ask God to give you what you want to stand up against this.”

“If I did, it would not undo the past.”

“Something else can do that.”

He did not answer, but reached his hat, saying something again about time, and the fly.  I must make another effort.  “Oh, Harold! give up this!  Do not be so cruel to Dora and to me.  Have you made us love you better than anybody, only to go away from us in this dreadful way, knowing it is to give yourself up to destruction?  Do you want to break our hearts?”

“Me!” he said, in a dreamy way.  “You don’t really care for me?”

“I?  Oh, Harry, when you have grown to be my brother, when you are all that I have in this world to lean on and help me, will you take yourself away?”

“It might be better for you,” he said.

“But it will not,” I said; “you will stay and go on, and God will make your strength perfect to conquer this dreadful thing too.”

“You shall try it then,” he said, and he began to sweep those accounts into a drawer as if he had done with them for the night, and as he brought his head within my reach, I could not but kiss his forehead as I said, “Thank you, my Harry.”

He screwed his lips together, with a strange half-smile very near tears, emptied the rest of a bottle of soda-water into a tumbler, gulped it down, opened the door, turned down the gas, and came down with me.  Mr. Yolland was watching, I well knew, but he discreetly kept out of sight, and we came out into a very cold raw street, with the stars twinkling overhead, smiling at us with joy I thought, and the bells were ringing for evening service.

But our dangers were not over.  We had just emerged into the main street when a dog-cart came dashing up, the two cigars in it looming red.  It was pulled up.  Harold’s outline could be recognised in any light, but I was entirely hidden in his great shadow, and a voice called out: 

“Halloo, Alison, how do?  A chop and claret at the ’Boar’—­eh?  Come along.”

“Thank you,” said Harold, “but I am walking home with Miss Alison—­”

The two gentlemen bowed, and I bowed, and oh! how I gripped Harold’s arm as I heard the reply; not openly derisive to a lady, but with a sneer in the voice, “Oh! ah! yes!  But you’ll come when you’ve seen her home.  We’ll send on the dog-cart for you.”