As soon as Antonio re-entered the porch of the monastery the Fathers thronged forward pressing him to break his long fast. But he shook his head and trudged on, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. In the cool cloister he paused a moment upon the slab which covered the body of Sebastian. Then he turned into the narrow doorway and climbed, with dragging steps, to his old seat on the flat roof. One of the younger monks tried to follow; but José and Cypriano barred his passage. The two sturdy fellows, eyeing one another jealously, stood guard on either side of the gloomy opening, like two genii keeping the door of a cave. Antonio sat down on the bench of cork. At the same moment a carriage rolled out through the principal gate of the abbey. He knew that it was bearing Isabel to rejoin her friend at Navares. Down the dusty hill it went; past the farm; and onwards until it was no more than a tremulous black spot against the whiteness of the road. As it approached the pine-woods some plate of burnished brass in the harness caught the light and blazed at Antonio for a moment, like a tiny sun. Then the shadow engulfed it, and he saw it no more. Very calmly and with perfect concentration of mind Antonio resumed his devout thanksgiving for his first Mass. God had enabled him to rebuild His broken altar and to offer upon it the Holy Sacrifice. In the dazzling refulgence of that immense grace his sufferings and hardships were no more than grains of dust dancing in a sunbeam. The chief events of his past re-enacted themselves before him, like a stage show, and he saw that his life had been an unbroken pageant of divine mercy, full of glittering lights and rich shadows. He recalled all that God had done in him, and _vidit quod esset bonum_; "he saw that it was good." When the monk's thanksgiving was finished Isabel reclaimed his mind. The strange peace which had descended upon them both, as she gazed at their white rose, abode with him still. There was no rebellion in his soul, no ache in his heart. The whole history of their love unrolled its bright length before him, like a holy scroll illuminated in blue and blood-red and gold, and he found nothing written therein that he would have altered or erased. _Vidit quod esset bonum_. It was good, all good, to the end. He sat and pondered upon their wonderful love. At first he was confident that Isabel and he, he and Isabel, were the lovers of lovers, the supreme lovers of all time. But humility brought him a larger thought. Surely, before Isabel and he were born, there had been men and women loving as purely and as grandly. And surely there would be men and women loving as grandly and as purely after he and Isabel were dead.