"About Mrs. Baxter. No! Don't say anything insincere. I know as well as you do that you hated it as much as I did. I could put up with the tale when it was half truth and half white lies. But it has changed with every telling until it's nearly all jet-black fibs. My mother liked her poor friends more than her rich ones; but Mrs. Baxter was not her friend. Nor is Mrs. Baxter's name Clara. It is plain Jane." Antonio smiled. "Anyhow, I've got it over," he said. "It had to come, some time or other. But where are your clouds that are going to drench me to the skin?" "Over there," answered Isabel, pointing to one tiny milk-white cirrus adrift in the clear blue lake of heaven. "It's as large as a man's hand. You think I'm irreligious; but I've read the Bible, and I remember something about a cloud no bigger than a man's hand which worked some miracle." "That little cloud delivered Israel from drought and from famine," said Antonio. "And this little cloud has delivered you from Mrs. Baxter and from ... me," she retorted. "It is banishing me from you," said Antonio, with prompt gallantry. "If you wish to see me again--though I can't think why you should," she said, in as colorless a tone as she could command, "don't always come in the afternoon, or to the house. Mrs. Baxter will drive you mad. Come in the morning, to the ravine--that pretty pool with the cascade and the stepping-stones. I shall be there reading on fine days. It's a shame to pen you up in a stuffy house. Besides, you said it was your favorite spot. Mrs. Baxter is calling. Good-bye." II When Isabel reached the pool with the stepping-stones Antonio was already there. He could have wished that Miss Kaye-Templeman had not suggested what might look like surreptitious meetings; but, being a Portuguese gentleman as well as a monk, he could do no other than attend her at the place she had appointed. It was a perfect morning. The sun shone more hotly and brightly than on many a day of July, making one thankful for the shade of the trees, and for the cold spray of the waterfall. Hundreds of birds were singing, and a great Japanese medlar scented the air. Yet, after half an hour or so of uneasy talk on commonplace topics, the monk turned home again with a smarting breast. Somehow the lady gave him a feeling that he had intruded; that he had committed an indelicacy in so swiftly taking her at her word; and that he was beginning to bore her. The afternoon, before, on the top of the steps, she had seemed sorry to see him go; but, at the stepping-stones, she seemed rather to regret his having come. While her politeness was unexceptionable, their good-comradeship appeared to be at an end.