The sun hung low behind the scented orange grove before Virginia moved, laying her thin cheek on Shiela’s hand.

“Did you see—­that letter—­in the sand?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“The writing—­you knew it?...  Answer me, Shiela.”

“Yes, I knew it.”

Virginia lay very still for a while, then covered her face with both hands.

“Oh, my dear, my dear!” breathed Shiela, bending close beside her.

Virginia lay motionless for a moment, then uncovered her face.

“It is strange,” she said, in a colourless, almost inaudible voice.  “You see I am simply helpless—­dependent on your mercy....  Because a woman does not faint over—­nothing.”

The deep distress in Shiela’s eyes held her silent for a space.  She looked back at her, then her brooding gaze shifted to the laden branches overhead, to the leafy vistas beyond, to the ground where the golden fruit lay burning in the red, level rays of the western sun.

“I did not know he was married,” she said vacantly.

Swift anger burned in Shiela’s cheeks.

“He was a coward not to tell you—­”

“He was honourable about it,” said Virginia, in the same monotonous voice.  “Do you think I am shameless to admit it?  Perhaps I am, but it is fairer to him.  As you know this much, you should know the truth.  And the truth is that he has never said he loved me.”

Her face had become pinched and ghastly, but her mouth never quivered under this final humiliation.

“Did you ever look upon a more brazen and defenceless woman—­” she began—­and then very quietly and tearlessly broke down in Shiela’s tender arms, face hidden on the young girl’s breast.

And Shiela’s heart responded passionately; but all she could find to say was:  “Dear—­I know—­indeed, indeed I know—­believe me I know and understand!” And all she could do was to gather the humbled woman into her arms until, her grief dry-spent, Virginia raised her head and looked at Shiela with strange, quenched, tearless eyes.

“We women are very helpless, very ignorant,” she said, “even the worst of us.  And I doubt if in all our lives we are capable of the harm that one man refrains from doing for an hour....  And that, I think, is our only compensation....  What theirs may be I do not know....  Dear, I am perfectly able to go, now....  I think I see your mother coming.”

They walked together to the terrace where Mrs. Cardross had just arrived in the motor; and Shiela, herself shaken, wondered at the serene poise with which Virginia sustained ten minutes of commonplaces and then made her final adieux, saying that she was leaving on the morning train.

“May we not see each other in town?” she added amiably; and, to Shiela:  “You will let me know when you come North?  I shall miss you until you come.”

Mrs. Cardross sent her back in the motor, a trifle surprised at any intimacy between Shiela and Virginia.  She asked a frank question or two and then retired to write to Mrs. Carrick, who, uneasy, had at last gone North to find out what financial troubles were keeping both her husband and her father so long away from this southland that they loved so well.