"The facts of the story, in the main, are perfectly correct. I told Miss Easter so."
They had reached the end of the sea-wall, and as they turned mechanically back upon their footsteps, Sir Julian for a moment found himself facing her.
The look in her eyes was doubtful, defiant, beseeching, all at once. Something in it evoked from him a very sincere and simple desire to reassure her.
"Won't you tell me about it, if you care to? I'm quite sure that, whatever the facts may be, there is another aspect to them than the obvious one."
He heard a little gasp that unmistakably denoted relief.
"Thank you very much. It's so much easier now you've said that—and I want to tell you about it. You'll understand, perhaps."
"Don't hurry," said Julian, more with reference to a certain breathlessness in her speech than to the increased speed at which she was walking beside him.
However, she slackened her pace and presently began to speak quietly.
"I don't suppose you know exactly what it's like for a girl with no home of her own—the difficulty of having any friends, or seeing anyone except just the people one's working with—not that there was ever anyone I wanted to see particularly, the men I associated with were all of Mr. Cooper's type, as nice and as polite as could be, always—but I had nothing in common with them except the day's work. There were a few friends of my father's—he was an architect—but after his death they rather dropped away from us. They were the sort of people who turned up their noses at the dressmaking business. My mother took it up, after he died, because it was the only thing she could do to make money, and she hoped it would mean that I need never go out and work for myself when I grew up. I'm glad," said Miss Marchrose vehemently, "I'm glad and thankful that she never lived to see the muddle I made of everything."
Sir Julian remained silent, aware that she was talking to herself as much as to him.