She seemed a shade vexed, and did not speak again until they reached the spot of which Antonio had spoken. It was part of a ravine. Rustic steps led down to the margin of the water, which broadened in this place to a rippling pool. From a face of brown rock, to the right, the bright torrent came tumbling in a thunderous cascade. To the left, at the lower end of the pool, it raced seawards almost hidden in a leafy, ferny, stony channel, whence its voice ascended like the throbbing, booming sound of an organ. Generation after generation of monkish gardeners had chosen this sheltered spot for the rearing of their most precious trees. Araucarias, deodars, date-palms, and cedars of Lebanon were mingled with cork-oaks, eucalyptus, willows, sea-pines, plum-trees, planes, and chestnuts. Ten or twelve tree-ferns overtopped by a giant palm suggested a tropical forest. Stepping-stones had been fixed in the pool at its narrowest part, and on the other bank was a grotto-chapel hewn in the face of a boulder as big as a house.
The stepping-stones were slippery with spray from the loud cascade; but Isabel tripped from one to another confidently and easily, scarcely touching Antonio's proffered hand. On the further bank she paused, to take breath, and stood gazing westward. Below her lay a hundred acres of wood, softly musical with the twittering and singing of birds and with the hum of the hidden torrent. Further down rose the monastery. Beyond, in the plain, could be seen Antonio's farm; and, still further to the west, the Atlantic.
"This is the spot I meant," said Antonio.
"It is very beautiful," was all her answer. She spoke it in so cheerless a tone that Antonio was concerned.
"England is beautiful too," he said. "At first it is only natural you should be homesick."
"Homesick?" she echoed, suddenly facing him with defiant eyes. "I'm not homesick. I don't know what it means. I don't know what Home means, either."
Antonio was startled. Three or four speeches came to his tongue's tip, some of them inquisitive, all of them sympathetic. Finally he said:
"Home is not built in a day. I myself was not bred and born in this part of Portugal. At first every face was strange. But it is home now. This torrent is the stream that runs through the kitchen of the abbey where I used to work. It is the brook that refreshes my little farm. Once it was no more to me than so many gallons of water. Now it talks and sings to me like a friend. Little by little you will learn to love this place."
"I loved it as soon as I saw it," she retorted. "But I don't love it now. I loved it for about three hours."
"Three hours? Why three hours?"