"But I have come back. I shall come back--the Mother Superior..."
"The Mother Superior is in Saragossa. I am mistress here," replied Sor Teresa, standing still and dark, like one of the pines at Torre Garda. The Sarrion blood was rising to her pale cheek. Her eyes glowed darkly beneath her overshadowing head-dress. Command--that indefinable spirit which is vouchsafed to gentle people, while rough and strong men miss it--was written in every line of her face, every fold of her dress, in the quiet of her small, white hands, resting motionless against her skirt.
Juanita stood looking at her with flashing eyes, with her head thrown back, with clenched hands,
"Then I will go somewhere else. But I do not understand you. You always wanted me to go into religion."
Sor Teresa held up one hand and cut short her speech. For the habit of obedience is so strong that clear-headed men will deliberately go to their death rather than relinquish it. The gesture was known to Juanita. It was dreaded in the school.
"Think--" said Sor Teresa. "Think before you say that."
"Well," argued Juanita, "if you did not urge me in words, you used every means in your power to induce me to take the veil--to make it impossible for me to do anything else."
"Think!" urged Sor Teresa. "Think again. Do not include me in such generalities without thinking."
Juanita paused. She ran back in her mind over a hundred incidents of school life, remembered, as such are, with photographic accuracy.
"Well," she admitted at length. "You did your best to make me hate it--at all events."