They stooped down together. The unclouded sun had already dried both the gargoyle and its mossage and leafage. Isabel took her fair share of the work, and between them they easily lifted the stone from the ground. But they had not borne it twenty inches towards the shrine before she let go and sprang clear, with a scream. The gargoyle struck upon a knob of rock and smashed into three pieces.
Antonio's glance followed Isabel's. She was gazing with horror at the long black grave from which they had wrenched the stone. It was a nest of centipedes. The creatures writhed this way and that, like the letter S, incalculably multiplied and gone mad. Some of them were bright scarlet, some were sickly yellow. Beyond them, half of a long worm, bald and clammy, lay across the slimy track of some hidden slug. A scurrying ear-wig touched it, and the worm disappeared as if by magic into the earth. Meanwhile two horny beetles were shouldering their way through the stubby grass.
The monk had hardly realized the success of his too vivid allegory when he saw that Isabel had snatched up her skirts and fled. He grabbed his cloak and leaped after her; but although he was almost immediately at her side, she continued her flight without recognizing his existence. After two or three minutes a swollen tributary of the torrent brought her to a halt.
"I am so sorry," he said, very humbly. "I never thought it could be so horrible as that."
"You're sorry too late," she cried. "I know you love me; yet you're always acting as if you despise me. It's your chief delight to humiliate me. Religion ruins you. Till we get to religion your heart is tenderer than a woman's; but, when religion comes in, I believe you'd burn me at the stake and feel proud of it."
Great tears came into her eyes; but before he saw them he had already recognized how thoughtless and unkind he had been in luring her to lift the gargoyle. The sight of the tears completed his repentance.
"With my whole heart I ask pardon," he pleaded, "although what I did was almost unpardonable. I didn't think; but it was selfish and brutal to score a point like that. Isabel, try to forgive me."
Whenever he spoke her name and looked into her eyes she became as clay in his hands. But Antonio did not know it. He took her silence to mean anything but pardon; and therefore his tone was humbler than ever as he added:
"We cannot part like this, Isabel. These rocks are dry and warm to your feet. We shall find no better spot."
He spread his cloak for her once more, and sat down at her side. Two or three minutes passed without a word. Then she said: