“It was very good of you,” she said, in a low voice—­“and quite stupid of me.”

Shiela straightened to her full height and stood gravely watching the sea-water trickle from her joined palms.  When the last shining drop had fallen she looked questioningly at Miss Suydam.

“I’m a little tired, that is all,” said Virginia.  She rose rather unsteadily and took advantage of Shiela’s firm young arm, which, as they progressed, finally slipped around Miss Suydam’s waist.

Very slowly they crossed the burning sands together, scarcely exchanging a word until they reached the Cardross pavilion.

“If you’ll wait until I have my shower I’ll take you back in my chair,” said Shiela.  “Come into my own dressing-room; there’s a lounge.”

Virginia, white and haggard, seated herself, leaning back languidly against the wall and closing her heavy eyes.  They opened again when Shiela came back from the shower, knotting in the girdle of her snowy bath-robe, and seated herself while her maid unloosed the thick hair and rubbed it till the brown-gold lustre came out like little gleams of sunlight, and the ends of the burnished tresses crisped and curled up on the smooth shoulders of snow and rose.

Virginia’s lips began to quiver; she was fairly flinching now under the pitiless contrast, fascinated yet shrinking from the splendid young creature before her, resting there aglow in all the vigourous beauty of untainted health.

And from the mirror reflected, the clear eyes smiled back at her, seeming to sear her very soul with their untarnished loveliness.

“Suppose you come and lunch with me?” said Shiela.  “I happen to be quite alone.  My maid is very glad to do anything for you.  Will you come?”

“Yes,” said Virginia faintly.

An hour later they had luncheon together in the jasmine arbour; and after that Virginia lay in the hammock under the orange-trees, very still, very tired, glad of the silence, and of the soft cool hand which covered hers so lightly, and, at rare intervals, pressed hers more lightly still.

Shiela, elbow on knee, one arm across the hammock’s edge, chin cupped in her other palm, sat staring at vacancy beside the hammock where Virginia lay.  And sometimes her partly doubled fingers indented her red lower lip, sometimes they half framed the oval face, as she sat lost in thought beside the hammock where Virginia lay so pale and still.

Musing there in the dappled light, already linked together by that subtle sympathy which lies in silence and in a common need of it, they scarcely stirred save when Shiela’s fingers closed almost imperceptibly on Virginia’s hand, and Virginia’s eyelids quivered in vague response.

In youth, sadness and silence are near akin.  That was the only kinship they could claim—­this slim, pale scion of a worn-out line, and the nameless, parentless girl beside her.  This kinship was their only bond—­unadmitted, uncomprehended by themselves; kinship in love, and the sadness of it; in love, and the loneliness of it; love—­and the long hours of waiting; night, and the tears of it.