"There's not an hour to lose," she went on. "If you and I are going to do the right thing, I must tell Mrs. Baxter to stop the packing at once. You jump! You turn pale. I suppose you're shocked to hear me call it the right thing. I can't help it. I must speak the truth. It is the right thing. And the opposite thing is not only wrong; it's wicked, it's blasphemous, it's a crime. No. Don't interrupt me. You needn't think we're going over all the old, old arguments again."
"You have changed your mind rather swiftly," said Antonio, refusing to be suppressed. "Barely four hours ago you seemed to acquiesce in—"
"In my fate," she said, with a bitter laugh. "So I did. You worked on my feelings. Don't think me coarse and brutal; but I'll give you one illustration. You spread for me your cloak. Do you think I didn't see how old it was? When I thought of that, and of all the hardships you'd suffered, my heart broke and I cried and cried and cried like a baby. But I've changed my mind. I admire you as much as ever; but I don't admire the way you are going on. A man like you ought to have the best cloak in the world, and all the rest of the best things with it. You are a poet, you are a delicate gentleman. I see it every time you pour out a drop of wine or touch a flower. You would rejoice in exquisite things more than any woman."
"Shall I offend you, Isabel?" he asked, coloring up, "if I remind you that this talk is to be short? We are not getting on."
"Yes, we are getting on fast," she retorted. "I say that I hate the way you are living. To save money and to buy back this place for the Benedictines is all very well; but I say that your sacrifices are overdone, and that God must be grieved by your excesses. He has shown that you are not meant to be a monk. He has driven your brethren away, and instead of them he has sent you ... me. No. I'm not conceited. I don't think I'm wonderful. But I'm your destiny, and that's everything. You were not called to monasticism; you were called to me. That is, you were called to be a monk only to save you from the wrong woman, only until the appointed day should dawn for you and me to meet. It has dawned. Yes, Antonio, I can quote Scripture, and I don't quote it irreverently either. The day has dawned. And 'To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart.' If you do, it will be a sin; just as I suppose it's a sin for a man to harden his heart against the call to be a monk."
"No more of this, I pray," cried Antonio. "If there is some great new fact, let us have it; but let us not hark back to what we have threshed out already."
"Very well," she said. "Here is the great new fact. My father. What did I tell you about him? I told you that his next experiment will kill him. But there's only one way of snatching him out of peril. Pardon me for telling you that this abbey is mine. It was bought with my money, and I am, to some extent, mistress of my father's movements in Portugal. If I flatly decline to leave here; if I pension off Mrs. Baxter; and if ... if you do what is right by yourself and by me; then, and only then, will my father come down from the clouds and look facts in the face. If I go back to Lisbon, I go back to kill him."
Deeply pained, Antonio raised a hand to stop her. She took a step forward and looked at him with steady eyes, but with trembling lips.
"Do you think, do you truly believe, that I would say a thing like this if it were not true?" she demanded in low, quivering tones. "Oh, Antonio, I have always known it. In your heart you despise me. You think I'm so far sunk in shamelessness that I am taking the name of God in vain and concocting lies about my father's life, so as to scare you into marrying me."
"Before Heaven, Isabel, I think no such foul thought," he answered solemnly. "But I am puzzled. If this abbey is yours, not his; and if you are mistress of his movements; why not assert your authority without dragging in me? Why not pension off Mrs. Baxter and get a companion from England? Why not despatch a post to Lisbon to-night informing your father that you will be no party to his new scheme, and that you insist on his recruiting quietly here?"