“For your brains, my dear,” she answered.  “And your strong heart.”

Sarrion was making up the fire when they entered the room—­lithe and young in his riding costume—­and he turned, smiling, to meet her.  She kissed him gravely.  There was always something unexplained between these two, something to be said which made them both silent.

“There is the coffee,” said Marcos, “on the table.  We have no time to spare.”

“Marcos means,” explained Sarrion significantly, “that we have no time to waste.”

“I think he is right,” said Sor Teresa.

“Then if that is the case, let us at least speak plainly,” said Sarrion, “with a due regard,” he allowed, with a shrug of the shoulder, “to your vows and your position, and all that.  We must not embroil you with your confessor; nor Juanita with hers.”

“You need not think of that so far as Juanita is concerned,” said Sor Teresa.  “It is I who have chosen her confessor.”

“Where is she?” asked Marcos.

“She is here, in Saragossa!”

“Why?” asked the man of few words.

“I don’t know.”

“Where is she in Saragossa?”

“I don’t know.  I have not seen her for a fortnight.  I only learnt by accident yesterday afternoon that she had been brought to Saragossa with some other girls who have been postulants for six months and are about to become novices.”

“But Juanita is not a postulant,” said Sarrion, with a laugh.

“She may have been told to consider herself one.”

“But no one has a right to do that,” said Sarrion pleasantly.

“No.”

“And even if she were a novice she could draw back.”

“There are some Orders,” replied Sor Teresa, slowly stirring her coffee, “which make it a matter of pride never to lose a novice.”

“Excuse my pertinacity,” said Sarrion.  “I know that you prefer generalities to anything of a personal nature, but does Juanita wish to go into religion?”

“As much ...”  She paused.

“Or as little,” suggested Marcos, who was looking out of the window.

“As many who have entered that life.”  Sor Teresa completed the sentence without noticing Marcos’ interruption.

“And these periods of probation,” said Sarrion, reverting to those generalities which form the language of the cloister.  “May they be dispensed with?”

“Anything can be dispensed with—­by a dispensation,” was the reply.

Sarrion laughed, and with an easy tact changed the subject which could scarcely be a pleasant one between a professed nun and two men known all over Spain as leaders in that party which was erroneously called Anti-Clerical, because it held that the Church should not have the dominant voice in politics.

“Have you seen our friend, Evasio Mon, lately?” he asked.

“Yes—­he is on the road behind me.”

“Behind you?  I understood that he left Pampeluna yesterday for Saragossa,” said Sarrion.