"The rest you know," he said. Throughout his recital he had gazed at the rocks, the sky, the trees, the water; but, as he ended, he glanced nervously at Isabel, hungering for her sympathy yet expecting her scorn. To his amazement she slipped from her place at his side, sank down on her knees beside him, seized both his hands in hers, and said: "Poor Antonio! You poor Antonio. My poor Antonio!" Her voice was tenderer than a mother's crooning over a wounded child. Tears were brimming her eyes and flowing down her cheeks as she gazed up into the monk's face. Then her voice broke. She bowed her head abruptly and tried to hide her face in her hands. But she did not let Antonio's hands go; and her tears laved the wounds torn by the thorns of her rose. Antonio could have endured her contempt; but this outburst of a pitying woman's love, the first he had known for five-and-twenty years, almost broke his heart. Thrice he devised words of consolation; thrice they were stifled in his throat. He could only sit and watch the conclusive rise and fall of her shoulders as the sobbing shook her frame. Once she controlled herself enough to look up and moan: "Why, oh why, must we be so unhappy?" The monk knew that an answer was not expected; so he sat silent. But later on, when some calmness had returned to her, she put the question again. "Why must we be so unhappy? If God can do everything, why has he made a world that goes so badly? Why has he made the easy things sins and only the hard things virtues? Why has he made his creatures so inclined to anger him or forget him? It seems mad. It seems almost diabolical. I've never met a wicked man or a foolish woman who could be foolish enough or wicked enough to make a world like this if they had the power. Why is God worse than we are?" "You do not mean what you say," he answered, soothing her. "You know you are not putting it fairly. You--" "I know, I know," she interrupted. "I am shallow, I am unjust, I suppose I'm almost blasphemous. Forgive me if I've hurt you. Only, your God is so terrible. I believe in Him; but I'm frightened. He is nothing but grandeur and majesty. He will have no rebellion, He insists on everybody's homage all the time." "He is Love, everlasting Love," said Antonio warmly, "and if any words of mine have made you doubt it, may He forgive me. I see the world's unbelief, first and foremost, as Love rejected; and if I am a monk it is in the hope that my whole life's prayers may perchance be one poor drop of balm poured into Love's wounds. But these matters are too weighty to be talked of like this. The origin of evil, the mystery of free-will--you have raised the problems that none can solve."