"It is in God's name," he retorted, "that I must and will say more. Isabel, when you went away I did not know I loved you. I thought my grief was no more than an aching, bleeding wound of sympathy, of pity. But, little by little, I came to know that I loved you. Not with profane love. I came to believe that our Lord had vouchsafed to me a love such as unfallen man would have had for unfallen woman, and I believed that you, Isabel, loved me with as holy a love in return. It was not a love which weaned me from the love of God. It was a way of loving God more, and of loving Him more perfectly. I even learned to thank God for our separation; because I knew my human weakness and I knew how swiftly this love of you, which was also a love of God, might be changed into a deceitful love of self. But to-day what do I find? That your love for me was only a delusion, a phase, a stage, a means to another end--that, and that only." He strode up and down, as if he would shake from his shoulders this last and heaviest of his griefs. But when he reached the spot where he had pronounced his final answer twenty years before he heard a step at his side and felt a light touch on his hand. "No, Antonio," she said "No. Not that and that only." He started violently. She was facing him, with downcast eyes and with the rose-pink of girlhood once more glowing in her cheeks. Her voice was low and sweet. "Antonio," she said very slowly, "how strange it all is, and wonderful! You sent me away in autumn, when the sun made haste to set and the storm had torn the leaves from the trees. I have come back in the spring, amidst thousands of birds and millions of flowers. I have come back in the sunshine to find that you loved me even more than I loved you." Her voice died away so gently that Antonio could not be sure whether the headlong waterfall and the delirious birds had not robbed him of some sweet saying. At last she spoke again and said: "Yes, Antonio, you loved me more than I loved you. But do not think that I loved you little or lightly. Above all, do not fear that my love is dead. Antonio, I will tell you what I had never meant to tell anybody in this world." He waited a long time before she began her confession. To help her he bent his gaze upon the ground. At last he heard her speaking, so softly that he had to strain his ears to listen.