The Navares clock struck two. Theophilo sprang to his feet.
"Adeus, Senhor," he said, "and thanks."
"No!" cried Antonio, plunging after him and gripping his arm. "I have not refused. An hour remains. Give me thirty minutes. This is a terrible affair. Stay here. In half an hour I will return."
Without awaiting an answer he hurried away. Quitting the Alameda by a side gate, he dived into a sunless alley and pushed at the door of the church of the Santa Cruz. It swung inwards. He hastened along the broad nave until he came to the brazen grille which barred the chapel of the Santissimo. There he sank down on the plank floor and, stretching despairing hands to the Presence on the altar, he cried out in agony, Domine, quid me vis facere: "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"
The answer came swiftly. It was as though a voice, a strong Man's voice, yet a voice even sweeter than Isabel's, said in his ear:
"Antonio, lend Theophilo your conto of reis."
Of all the supernal voices which had ever spoken to him, this was the nearest and the clearest. If the brazen grille had opened and an angel had come forth proclaiming it with the voice of a trumpet, Antonio could not have been more sure that his Lord was bidding him lend Theophilo the money. Yet he could not, all in a moment, accept the answer. Horror, kindling almost to anger, filled his soul.
So this was to be the end. For fifteen years he had been slaving to fill the pockets of infamous extortioners; and now he was to take the price of freedom and pay it away to replace the plunderings of a runaway swindler. A hideous thought, more foul and hideous than the blankest atheism, rushed into his mind. It was a thought about God. That God existed Antonio could not doubt; nor could he question that God intervened, as the Christians believe, in men's and women's lives. The Christians said that He was all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. But perhaps the truth was, after all, that He was all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-mocking.
Antonio could grant that a work of mercy to men should take precedence of a work of praise towards God. But if God had intended him for works of mercy, why had He called him into a contemplative Order, and why had He suffered him to go on finding a dozen contos for usurers while he was refusing pence to honest men? And Isabel, his breaking of the heart of Isabel—how did that supreme deed fit into the sorry scheme? Yes, God had mocked him. He had made the world, and all the men and women in it, as a puppet-show to divert His eternal boredom. He had sat lounging on the arch of heaven for five-and-twenty years watching his, Antonio's, toil and strife just as a lazy lout lolls on the grass watching ants working hour after hour at the ant-hill which he intends to kick to pieces before he goes home.
The monk did not deliberately think these thoughts. They swept thunderously over him like a tidal wave drowning a lowland coast. For a moment they roared in his ears and took away his wits. But as he came to the surface he rallied all the forces of his soul and struck out desperately to regain his rock of faith. God was no mocker. He was Love, all Love; and the thick blackness of this new and dreadful ordeal was only a shadow cast by the eternal Light. Nevertheless, Antonio all but failed to resist the sucking undertow of fresh doubts and to maintain his foothold amidst the battering surf of despair.