"I saw much more. I saw that, for years and years, I had been fighting for happy human relationships. I, for whom God's love had reserved this richer bliss, had cried out, year after year, for a father, a mother, a sister, a brother, a friend. My bitterest cry, Antonio, had been for you; but God knows that I had cried out for you less as a husband than as a comrade and a most dear friend. On that July morning I saw why our Lord had refused me the lower good to grant me the higher, and how He had sorely wounded me that His balm might more sweetly heal me."
Isabel ceased. Her long speech had been growing less and less easy until she could not utter another word. The nun thought that the cause was in herself. Why had she not confined herself to reciting the precise words with which she had come prepared? Or why had she not taken the still better course of throwing all her preparation to the winds and of pouring out her heart to Antonio in whatever words might come? Why had she muddled fragments of a set speech with a nervous impromptu?
She did not know that the cause of her failure was in the listener. Although her story told Antonio that his dearest prayer had been superabundantly answered, the old wound in his heart was bleeding afresh. For half a moment, with an exquisite spiritual jealousy which was beyond his will, he was jealous of his Lord. Throughout the long years of his growing love of God his chaste love of Isabel had never died; and he could not bear the thought that perhaps this love was no longer requited. He tried to speak; but his tongue was tied. Antonio's heart sank. What was this mystery? How was it that their accord was broken at the very moment when it should have been most perfect?
When the pause had become intolerable Isabel ended it. She began speaking quickly and nervously. The forced lightness of her tones contrasted almost painfully with her grave earnestness of a few minutes before.
"Your question is answered," she said. "I have told you how I became a nun. I did not rush into a convent, like a damsel of romance, out of chagrin at a disappointment in love. My disappointment, if we may use the word, was only the means of opening my eyes to a vocation as real as your own."
Only! Antonio could see that their wonderful love had accomplished all she said. But was it only that, and nothing more? Again he strove to speak; again he failed; and again it was Isabel who ended the pause.
"For three or four months," she said, in an even more matter-of-fact tone than before, "I lived with Lady Julia Blighe. I entered the convent at Christmas. Probably you, a monk of Saint Benedict, can hardly take the convents of our Order seriously. Our chant is made easy, all on three notes. We have flowers in our rooms. Each nun has a silver spoon. I have always been a coward when it came to physical hardships."
"I know your Order and I revere it," protested Antonio, finding speech at last. "You are not a coward. The inward mortification is harder to practise than the outward. I know that the poor people used to call your nuns 'the holy Maries.' But tell me how you are employed."
"I teach in the school," she answered. "That is why I am here to-day. Let me explain. We have had in our care three sisters from the Beira Alta, daughters of a Portuguese Marquis. Their education is finished. I brought them out to Oporto and handed them over to their parents last week. Before I left England I told our Mother Superior all about you, save your name, and it is with her consent that I have come here to-day. But I believed that your monks had been restored years and years ago. I expected to see you for half an hour in a monastery parlor. A sister of the Third Order of Saint Dominic is traveling with me on her way to bring back some pupils from Lisbon. We reached your little town, Navares, last night. There we heard this news. The people could talk of nothing else."
The hardness went out of her tone, and her voice faltered as she added softly: "They told me, Antonio, that this would be your first Mass. They told me how you have fought and what you have suffered."