Tears had come to Teresa’s eyes. “Then the hope of Greece will perish! And he—its leader, who has given his all—will fail!”
The padre’s look clouded. It was the undying war of Christendom against the idolater, the fight the church militant must wage daily till the reign of the thousand golden years began. Yet noble as was the Grecian struggle, to his mind it had been smirched by a name famed for its evil.
“I would so fair a cause had a better champion!” he said slowly.
Her tears dried away. “And you say that?” she cried, her tone vibrating. “You who saw him, and with whom he lived here?—you?”
He thought her distrait. “He here? What do you mean?”
“Do you not know? Father, he who leads the Greeks is the man with whom I stood that day beside this shrine!”
The friar started. Rapid emotions crossed his face. For many a month a sore question had turned itself over and over in his mind. Had he stumbled in his duty to that man who had come in hopelessness and departed with despair unlightened? Day after day he had seen the misery reflected in the countenance. He knew now that he had been witnessing the efforts of a fallen soul to regain its lost estate—a soul that was now fighting in the ranks of the Cross! In his own self-reproach he had prayed that it might be given him again to hold before his eyes the symbol of the eternal suffering. Was this not the answer to that prayer?
His eyes suffused.
“Wait for me here, my daughter,” he said. “I shall not be long. We go together. Who knows if the summons you bring be not the voice of God!”