"One minute more, and I will not trouble the Senhorita again," he said, with as much hauteur as her own. "I have offered an explanation and I have sworn that it is true. As for insults, I never give them, though I receive many. You are neither reasonable nor just. I have done." He was turning away. But her pride broke down. She stopped and faced him, and her blue eyes suddenly shone with a rush of tears. "Yes," she cried. "Scold me, abuse me, make me wretched. It doesn't seem natural for anybody to be kind very long. Hate the sight of me, like everybody else. Call me unreasonable. So I am. Call me unjust. So I am. If there's anything more, I'm ready." Antonio stared at her in amazement as she clenched her fine hands and stamped one of her small feet. "All head and no heart," young Crowberry had said of this poor Isabel; and, for twenty-four hours, the monk had taken it for granted that young Crowberry was right. Yet, as she stood wet-eyed before him, she seemed to be all one big, bursting, breaking heart. Her tears helped him like lenses to read her through and through. He discerned the tragedy of her girlhood, passed between a selfish woman and a father who was half a madman. He pictured her, dragged from place to place, from failure to failure, from humiliation to humiliation. He understood why she had builded icy barriers of pride to repel the insolent pity of those who found entertainment in her father's fiascos. And he saw, what she did not see herself, that under all her defenses and pretenses was the heart of a little child. He was filled with a yearning to comfort her; but he could only stand and gaze at her with infinite compassion. "Yesterday," she went on, "I was happy. But to-day..." He waited for her to say "I am miserable." But she had seen the pity in his brown velvet eyes and it stung her. "To-day," she said, "I hate you!" VII As the main path from the monastery to the guest-house was broad and open, Miss Kaye-Templeman declined Antonio's protection. The glance and tone, however, which softened her words of refusal suggested to the monk that he was forgiven. "You can't endure my escort," he said, with a ghost of a smile, "because you still hate me." "I don't hate you," she retorted. "I never did hate you--not you in particular. For the moment I simply hated every thing and every place and every body. It's over now. Pray believe I don't make such an exhibition of myself often. And please forget, if you can, that I was so weak and silly. Good-bye. I will tell my father you are still at the abbey." Antonio returned to the chapel. Young Crowberry was kneeling on the lowest step of the altar, facing the empty tabernacle. He rose in confusion and came to meet the monk. "I thought you had taken her up to the guest-house," he said, as they walked out into the cloisters. "I heard you both go outside. I suppose you wasted your breath. Isabel Kaye-Templeman will never forgive you."