Julian appealed to Horace.
“Don’t read it!” he cried. “Hear what she has to say to you first!”
Horace’s hand answered him with a contemptuous gesture. Horace’s eyes devoured, word by word, the Matron’s message.
He looked up when he had read it through. There was a ghastly change in his face as he turned it on Mercy.
She stood between the two men like a statue. The life in her seemed to have died out, except in her eyes. Her eyes rested on Horace with a steady, glittering calmness.
The silence was only broken by the low murmuring of Julian’s voice. His face was hidden in his hands—he was praying for them.
Horace spoke, laying his finger on the telegram. His voice had changed with the change in his face. The tone was low and trembling: no one would have recognized it as the tone of Horace’s voice.
“What does this mean?” he said to Mercy. “It can’t be for you?”
“It is for me.”
“What have You to do with a Refuge?”