She proceeded to rattle off half a dozen well-worn objections to the monastic life. Her words were her own; but underneath their freshness and liveliness Antonio recognized the stock tirade against monks and nuns which he had heard twenty times in England. He listened patiently till she had finished. Then he said: "We are not thinking of the same thing. Such monks and nuns as you are scorning do not exist. They are figments of your controversialists. They are stuffed figures, set up like skittles to be knocked down again. May I speak quite candidly?" "Speak quite candidly, or do not speak at all," she answered. "And personally?" "The more personally the better." "Then listen. You remember our first Wednesday--the day you and I and young Crowberry went all through the monastery?" "You mean the day you brought me the little blue bird with the orange-colored tail?" "You remember," continued Antonio, "how I showed you a monk's cell. That cell was mine. I lived in it for seven years. You pulled open all the drawers and looked inside the cupboard." Isabel flushed crimson, and demanded indignantly: "How did I know it was yours?" "You didn't know it was mine," he answered gently. "Still, it was certainly somebody's. For a moment, as you peeped and rummaged, I was distressed and disappointed. How could I reconcile it with your delicacy? But I soon found the answer. I understood that you thought of monks as you might think of your British Druids or of the Crusaders or of the Incas of Peru or of the Andalusian Moors--men that have lived and breathed once, men that were picturesque, men that figure well in romances, but, most of all, men that are utterly dead and gone and done with. Perhaps it is natural for you so to think. Your England has been without monks, save in holes and corners, for three hundred years." She was on the point of asking what all this might be leading to, when he added: "Again, last night, when I wrapped you in my habit, you laughed and said: 'Now I suppose I am a nun.' You no more intended to make fun of holy things than a bird intends sacrilege when it darts into a church and knocks down candles and vases with its wings. But you said it, all the same." "I don't deny saying it," she retorted; "I know perfectly well that I am coarse and wicked enough to say anything." "I am not blaming you, Isabel," he said gently. "You are not coarse and you are not wicked. We are at variance on the greatest of issues; but may God forbid that we should quarrel." The softness with which he spoke her name disarmed Isabel; and the fountains of lovingkindness which overbrimmed his words quenched the fire of wrath in her breast. To make sure that he was forgiven Antonio gazed at her with eyes so full of the old searching tenderness that a lump rose in her throat, and she looked away.