"What could this something be? I strove to square it with a dozen theories in turn, and I gave it twenty names; but not one would fit. At last, it occurred to me that after all, your own account of it might be true. Antonio ... you can hardly understand. In England faith is weak. There we have nearly all been taught the greater Christian verities; yet it smote me like a thunderbolt from heaven when I suddenly explained your life on the theory that the whole Christian gospel is truer than the stars. At the most I had believed that its truths had been realities in Palestine eighteen hundred years ago, and that the devout memory of them helped us and ennobled us to-day, like a stirring tale that is told. But, in one overwhelming revelation, I saw it as the eternal life of men. I can't find words. I saw it as something more vital than the air, something nearer to us than our own selves. I saw it as an unquenchable light, with the sun blinking in it like a farthing candle at noonday. And I saw your life, Antonio, reflecting that light and burning in the midst of it like a gem." He bent his head as if in pain; but she finished her speech. "Yes, I understood your life at last," she said very softly. "It was the _vita abscondita cum Christo in Deo_, 'the life that is hid with Christ in God.'" "God knows," he rejoined solemnly, "that I am not aping humility when I say that my life has been wilful and sinful and proud. Speak of such a life no more, I entreat. Speak of yourself. Tell me how you became a nun." "As soon as I had accounted for your life," said Isabel, "I was faced by a still harder riddle. How was I to account for my own life; and especially, for the way my life had become intertangled with yours? At the first glance I seemed to have been thrown across your path merely to try you. I seemed to be merely a single rung in your ladder to perfection. But, to be candid, I was not humble enough to rest satisfied with that. Surely I had some rôle of my own. To be simply another person's trial, another person's springboard to heaven, was not enough for a whole life. "Throughout one black week my new-found faith suffered an almost total eclipse. I rebelled in loathing against God for sacrificing me in the cause of your monkish perfection. Why should he have chosen me for so dreadful a work instead of some woman who had had her share of happiness? His cruelty seemed devilish.