A tall, curious door, much paneled, with a shining brass knob, stood before them. There was also a knocker of brass, shaped like a lyre. Azalea rapped with it.
“Come in,” said the voice of Carin, and Azalea threw wide the door and motioned Annie Laurie to enter.
What she saw then she was never to forget. It was as bright to her, as different from anything she ever had seen, as the green Azores are to one who has ridden long upon the gray Atlantic. The room was paneled high in white, and above it, decorations of tropical flowers and parokeets made the wall gay. Muslin curtains hung at the dormer windows, beneath draperies of delicate green. Near the north window was Carin’s easel, with the unfinished portrait of Azalea upon it. Chairs of green wicker stood about; a huge divan was piled with dainty pillows; in the white wooden fireplace, with its tiles of parrots, palms and pagodas, a bright fire burned. Japanese rugs of gray and white lay on the floor, and in jars of pale green, or gray, were beautiful blossoming plants.
But exquisite as the room was, and deeply as it satisfied Annie Laurie’s beauty-starved heart, it was as nothing to the girl who was the center of it.
In her crimson school frock, soft and graceful, her golden hair shining on her shapely head, her eyes full of tears of repentance, Carin stood awaiting them, her hands outstretched. It all seemed so different from what Annie Laurie knew of her, that at first she hesitated to go forward, but Carin came on, still with that look of solicitude in her face.
“Oh, Annie Laurie,” she said, “I see everything now. I see how I acted and how I made you feel. You’ll have to forgive me. I never was like that before. It was as if imps got inside me, and the worst of it was that I seemed to want to hang on to them. I knew I was wicked, but I liked to be that way. I just wouldn’t give up, though I was unhappy all the time. I told mother all about it, and she said that was the way it was when you got perverse. You liked it. Perversity seemed sweeter than anything. She said it was like being a drunkard. You enjoyed the thing that ruined you. I can see just what she meant. I’ll tell you now, Annie Laurie, that after the first day or two I found myself liking you, and I hated to admit it. I tried not to as hard as I could. I didn’t like mamma’s putting a girl in with us without talking it over, do you see? But I do like you—I had to. The whole trouble was that I couldn’t bear to give up. But you’ve made me, and now I’m well again. For it’s just like a spell of sickness, having a horrid, wicked idea like mine and holding on to it. Do you understand?”
Annie Laurie’s face had flushed softly; her eyes were misty, her handsome, large mouth slightly tremulous. She withdrew her hands from Carin’s, and put her arms close about her.
“When I say I forgive,” she said, “I do.”
“And do you say it?”