Still inevitably failing to understand her, he led the way to the door.
“Don’t waste the precious time,” he said. “Don’t leave her cruelly to herself. If you can’t go to her, let me go as your messenger, in your place.”
She stopped him by a gesture. He took a step back into the room, and paused, observing with surprise that she made no attempt to move from the chair that she occupied.
“Stay here,” she said to him, in suddenly altered tones.
“Pardon me,” he rejoined, “I don’t understand you.”
“You will understand me directly. Give me a little time.”
He still lingered near the door, with his eyes fixed inquiringly on her. A man of a lower nature than his, or a man believing in Mercy less devotedly than he believed, would now have felt his first suspicion of her. Julian was as far as ever from suspecting her, even yet. “Do you wish to be alone?” he asked, considerately. “Shall I leave you for a while and return again?”
She looked up with a start of terror. “Leave me?” she repeated, and suddenly checked herself on the point of saying more. Nearly half the length of the room divided them from each other. The words which she was longing to say were words that would never pass her lips unless she could see some encouragement in his face. “No!” she cried out to him, on a sudden, in her sore need, “don’t leave me! Come back to me!”
He obeyed her in silence. In silence, on her side, she pointed to the chair near her. He took it. She looked at him, and checked herself again; resolute to make her terrible confession, yet still hesitating how to begin. Her woman’s instinct whispered to her, “Find courage in his touch!” She said to him, simply and artlessly said to him, “Give me encouragement. Give me strength. Let me take your hand.” He neither answered nor moved. His mind seemed to have become suddenly preoccupied; his eyes rested on her vacantly. He was on the brink of discovering her secret; in another instant he would have found his way to the truth. In that instant, innocently as his sister might have taken it, she took his hand. The soft clasp of her fingers, clinging round his, roused his senses, fired his passion for her, swept out of his mind the pure aspirations which had filled it but the moment before, paralyzed his perception when it was just penetrating the mystery of her disturbed manner and her strange words. All the man in him trembled under the rapture of her touch. But the thought of Horace was still present to him: his hand lay passive in hers; his eyes looked uneasily away from her.
She innocently strengthened her clasp of his hand. She innocently said to him, “Don’t look away from me. Your eyes give me courage.”