She was looking at Julian while she spoke. The old longing to associate with the hard trial of the confession the one man who had felt for her, and believed in her, revived under another form. If she could only know, while she was saying the fatal words to Horace, that Julian was listening too, she would be encouraged to meet the worst that could happen! As the idea crossed her mind, she observed that Julian was looking toward the door through which they had lately passed. In an instant she saw the means to her end. Hardly waiting to hear the few kind expressions of sympathy and approval which he addressed to her, she hinted timidly at the proposal which she had now to make to him.
“Are you going back into the next room?” she asked.
“Not if you object to it,” he replied.
“I don’t object. I want you to be there.”
“After Horace has joined you?”
“Yes. After Horace has joined me.”
“Do you wish to see me when it is over?”
She summoned her resolution, and told him frankly what she had in her mind.
“I want you to be near me while I am speaking to Horace,” she said. “It will give me courage if I can feel that I am speaking to you as well as to him. I can count on your sympathy—and sympathy is so precious to me now! Am I asking too much, if I ask you to leave the door unclosed when you go back to the dining-room? Think of the dreadful trial—to him as well as to me! I am only a woman; I am afraid I may sink under it, if I have no friend near me. And I have no friend but you.”
In those simple words she tried her powers of persuasion on him for the first time.