"You have hurt your hand," she said. "What has cut it?"
"The thorns of a rose," he answered quietly.
His curtness disappointed Isabel. After her painful experience of his perverse obstinacy the morning before, she could not expect him to be converted from his folly or cured of his religious mania all in a moment, and she had come prepared for vigorous debate. But his cold self-possession and, above all, his avoidance of her eyes, dismayed her.
"Of course, you've thrown the rose away?" she asked.
"No, I have not thrown it away."
"Why?"
He spread his cloak on a carved stone bench for her to sit on, and did not answer.
"Why?" she repeated. "I want Father Antonio to explain. Are monks allowed to treasure up dead flowers? You'll be asking next for a tress of my hair."
He maintained his grim silence. Embarrassment and injured pride colored her cheeks a warm red; but she was determined to make him speak.
"I mean," she added, "that you won't ask for a lock of my hair at all. You'll expect me to go down in the dust and offer it you on my knees, and to coax you and implore you for days and days until you condescend to accept it. Your Majesty is a true Lord of Creation. He leaves me to do all the wooing."