“I want to speak to you!” she said. Her voice was tense and a little hoarse. Without another word, without so much as glancing at him, she passed him and led the way to his smoking-room; turned up the lamp with a quick, hard gesture, and then turned and faced him. All the colour had faded from Julian’s face, and he had followed her slowly. With the first sound of her voice the conviction had come to him that he was discovered. There were certain weaknesses in him hitherto undeveloped by the circumstances of his life, but radical factors in his character. Morally speaking he was a coward. His hour had come, and he was afraid to meet it. He came just inside the door and stood leaning against the writing-table, confronting his mother, but neither looking at her nor speaking. “Tell me where you have been since Friday!” she said, low and peremptorily; and then she stopped herself abruptly, putting out her hand as though to prevent him from speaking, as a spasm of pain distorted her face. “No!” she said in a hoarse, breathless way. “No, don’t! You’ll tell me a lie. Don’t! I know!” She had put out her hand and was steadying herself by the high oak mantelpiece--part of her recent present to Julian--but her face was rigid and set, and her eyes, full of a strange, indefinable agony, which she seemed to be all the while holding desperately at bay, never left the pale, downcast, almost sullen face opposite her. With a determined wrench and setting in motion of all his faculties, Julian pulled himself together so far as to take refuge in that sure resort of the deficient in moral courage--an assumption of jaunty and light-hearted non-comprehension. Perhaps he had never in his life been more like his mother than he was at that moment as he threw back his head and answered, with an affected gaiety which was somewhat hollow and unsuccessful: “What do you know, dear? You’re coming it rather strong, aren’t you?” “I know that you have been living with a common work-girl somewhere in Camden Town for a month or more!” The words were spoken in the same hoarse voice which rang now, low as it was, with an intolerable disgust. But its expression seemed to affect Julian not at all. The words themselves were occupying all his perception. A quick frown of consideration appeared on his forehead, as though some relief or reprieve had come to him, bringing with it possibilities the skilful turning to account of which called into play his mental faculties, and in so doing strung up his nerve. He dropped his artificiality of manner, and seemed to brace himself to meet the emergency in which he found himself. The situation had evidently suddenly altered its character for him. He was no longer cowed by it.