"Until to-morrow you must not go."
She began to disengage her fingers. Antonio gripped them fiercely and pleaded not only with his voice, but with his eyes.
"Isabel," he said, "one room at the guest-house is still yours. It can be made ready for you and for your friend to-night. It is your old room, with the white roses. I have suffered no one to enter it for twenty years."
This time she left her hand in his. The monk's voice, his brown velvet eyes, his clasp, and the rush of old memories were too much for her. She trembled a little; and suddenly a rain of tears fell upon Antonio's hand.
"Antonio," she sobbed, "I must go. Now. Don't ask me again. But, before I go, there is one thing more to tell you."
For many moments her weeping would not let her speak. At last she whispered between her sobs:
"That little bowl. The bowl you gave me, with the blue-and-orange bird. Do not despise me. When the time came, I felt I could give up the whole world, except that. For two months I turned a deaf ear to God, all because I couldn't give up ... that."
The exceeding bitterness of the memory made her sob afresh. When she could speak again, she said:
"Antonio, I will tell you where the little bowl is to-day. It has been made into a lamp. I had it encased in brass, so that it cannot break, and plated over with the purest silver. It hangs in a little church, in a slum near the London docks. It burns before the image of Saint Antonio."
Antonio could not speak. He forgot that he was still holding her hand, and she did not remember that she had not taken it away. After a long time she murmured, almost inaudibly: