"I still read English papers, and I know what you mean," said Antonio. "There is a fashion growing up among your poets of making free with the holiest things. They affect the reverence and simplicity of medieval believers when, in reality, they are robbing altars and looting sacristies to fill a property-box with theatrical properties. Chalices, censers, copes, chasubles, dalmatics, miters, pyxes; bishops, abbots, nuns, monks, friars, acolytes; crypts, stained glass, pointed arches, carven canopies--I see that all these are no more to them than stage backgrounds, stage puppets, stage dresses, stage tricks." "It makes the poems and paintings much more gorgeous, anyhow," she interrupted. "No doubt," said Antonio sternly. "Just as the palaces and harems of the Turks were more gorgeous after they had sacked the Holy Places. Let the Church be persecuted more than ever in your country, and I do not fear for her; but I tremble at the thought of your cleverest men taking her name in vain and praising her with their lips, while they are still obstinate pagans in their hearts and lives. Out of such blasphemy I foresee the birth of monstrous sins." "Until this morning," retorted Isabel, grievously disappointed in him, "I thought you were no worse than over-pious, and a little over-sentimental about your religious memories. I could never have believed that you would be bigoted and narrow-minded. Your prophecy only makes me shudder. I repeat that the beautiful decay of the Church is bringing more beauty into art; and I believe that more beauty in art will bring more beauty into life. Yet you say it will give birth to monstrous sins." For a long time Antonio did not reply. When he spoke his tone was so much altered that Isabel thought he accepted his defeat in argument. "Look at this," he said, pointing to a stone which lay near his foot. It had been a gargoyle on the shrine, but must have fallen to the ground before Antonio was born. Even if the shallow carving had not been almost rubbed away by the hand of time Isabel could hardly have made out its outlines through the silken mosses and tiny ivies which covered it. "It was part of the shrine once," he said. "I admit it looks more beautiful broken off and lying here in decay. I've never noticed it before. It ought to be in the porch. It isn't heavy. Will you help me to carry it?" They stooped down together. The unclouded sun had already dried both the gargoyle and its mossage and leafage. Isabel took her fair share of the work, and between them they easily lifted the stone from the ground. But they had not borne it twenty inches towards the shrine before she let go and sprang clear, with a scream. The gargoyle struck upon a knob of rock and smashed into three pieces.