Sigrid got up slowly and went to the verandah. She stood for a minute with her raised hand resting on the lintel, gazing out into the rain-soaked gardens. The moist air was full of fragrance and reviving life. When she turned at last there was a splash of colour in her pale cheeks.
"Mrs. Tristram, send for your husband—go to him. He is the sort of man who doesn't need to forgive."
"I can't."
"You love him——"
"I couldn't go to him until I knew——"
"—that you had nothing to forgive?"
Anne's silence answered. Sigrid studied her with no shadow of change on her own palely composed features.
"We're two women, Mrs. Tristram," she said, "and that makes many impossible things possible—it makes it possible, for instance, though we dislike one another, for us to be honest—even about the man we both love."
Anne lifted her wet, piteously twisted face.
"Then it's true?"