“When?”
“Now!”
Julia sobbed. “My mother!”
“That will come afterward. Never mind any of the rest of us—what we do and say. It doesn’t matter. Only think of him! Promise me you won’t leave him until you have made it right!”
“Are you sure I can?” the girl whispered, with such a face of hope and fear, such joy struggling with tears, that Florence, remembering in what hard ways even the greatest love may lead, leaned down and kissed her.
“Quite sure,” she said.
Julia drew yet closer. “Are you sure he—he loves me?” The last words were a breath.
Florence drew back coldly. “You must go now,” she said. Then seeing Julia shrink at her strange, dry voice, she added, “Do you think he would tell that to me?”—at what cost she herself did not measure.
But she did not realize that she was in the midst of her crisis. She was too much in it to look back or forward. She saw only outward actions, the minute present. When she spoke with the nurse at the door of the sick-room her voice was even matter-of-fact.
The white-capped woman came out. Florence waited until she went into another room farther down the hall. Then she almost pushed Julia in. “No one will come,” she murmured as she closed the door after her.