As Teresa told her errand, looking into the soluble eyes bent on her, the breeze stirred the young leaves, and the tiny waves lapped the margin-stones in a golden undercurrent of sound. Her words, unstudied and tense with feeling, acquired an unconscious eloquence. A great issue in perilous straits; she, with empty affluence that might save it—but alone, without companion for such a journey.
The friar listened with a growing wonder. In the seclusion of that solitude he had long since heard of the Greek rebellion—had yearned for its success. But it had been a thing remote from his lagoon island. He? To leave the peace of his studies to accompany a woman, to a land in the throes of war? A strange request! Why had she come to him?
“Have I ever seen you before, my daughter?”
Her heart beat heavily. “Yes, Father.”
She was leaning against the rock, her face lifted to his. The posture, the pathetic purity of her features, brought recollection.
Padre Somalian’s eyes lighted. Since that unforgotten scene on the path, he had often wondered what would be this woman’s wedded life, so tragically begun. By her face, she had suffered. Her husband had been old then—doubtless was dead. It was a mark of grace that she came now to him—a holy man—before others. If, alone in the world, she chose to consecrate her wealth thus nobly, well and good. If there had been fault back of that rich marriage, such an act would be in the line of fitting penance.
If there had been fault! The friar’s eyes turned away. He was thinking of the stranger whose brow her husband’s blow had marked—of the paper he himself had lifted from beneath the stone. Since the gusty day when he found the abandoned robe, he had prayed unceasingly for that unknown man’s soul.
“You will go?”
The question recalled his thought, gone afar.
“My daughter,” he demurred, “who am I, bred to quiet and contemplation, to guide you in such an enterprise?”