human
He didn't stop me, and I got back to my rooms in the Cloisters. I began to pack a few things, but the whole time I was feeling that I hadn't explained properly and that Burgess rather despised me. I got extraordinarily excited and angry over it, until at last I left the packing alone and went back to his house to justify myself. The man shewed me at once into the library, and it was only when I got inside that I realised that all this time Burgess ought to have been taking the Sixth for Tacitus. Instead he was still in his chair, still sucking at his pipe. I fired away, full of indignation, and went through the whole weary business from the beginning, just as I'd done before. He never interrupted me, never said a word till I'd finished. Then he told me pretty bluntly that he was only indirectly interested in me and that what he wanted to find out was why the child should be penalised, why I, who knew something of what it would have to go through, persisted in making it face the music for no fault of its own. I was pretty well worked up, but I tried to be reasonable and asked him what he suggested I should do. He never hesitated a moment this time! He told me it was my duty to treat the child as if he were my own son, never to let him or anyone else know what had happened before he was born, but to devote myself to him as if he were--well, _not_ my own son, _not_ someone for whom I was _naturally_ responsible, but someone who'd been entrusted to my _care_. He said, if I didn't--with the experience I'd got to back me.... Somehow, the way he put it, Stornaway....