visions, and am able to
make them realities. I dream of a dovecote with a tiled roof, and
straightway build it; I picture a gallery and a chapel and a library
away from the clack of tongues, and behold there it is. The eye cannot
say to the hand, 'I have no need of thee.' To see and dream without the
power of performance is heart-breaking. To perform without the gift of
imagination is soul-slaying. The man is blessed that hath both eye and
hand, tastes and means alike."

It was a very pleasant retreat that Sir Thomas More had built for
himself at the end of his garden, where he might retire when he wanted
solitude. There was a little entrance hall with a door at one corner
into the chapel, and a long low gallery running out from it, lined with
bookshelves on one side, and with an open space on the other lighted by
square windows looking into the garden. The polished boards were bare,
and there was a path marked on them by footsteps going from end to end.

"Here I walk," said More, "and my friends look at me from those shelves,
ready to converse but never to interrupt. Shall we walk here, Mr.
Torridon, while you tell me your business?"

Ralph had, indeed, a touch of scrupulousness as he thought of his host's
confidence, but he had learnt the habit of silencing impulses and of
only acting on plans deliberately formed; so he was soon laying bare his
anxiety about Chris, and his fear that he had been misled by the Holy
Maid.

"I am very willing, Mr. More," he said, "that my brother should be a
monk if it is right, but I could not bear he should be so against God's
leading. How am I to know whether the maid's words are of God or no?"

Sir Thomas was silent a moment.

"But he had thoughts of it before, I suppose," he said, "or he would not
have gone to her. In fact, you said so."

Ralph acknowledged that this was so.

"--And for several years," went on the other.

Again Ralph assented.

"And his tastes and habits are those of a monk, I suppose. He is long
at his prayers, given to silence, and of a tranquil spirit?"

"He is not always tranquil," said Ralph. "He is impertinent sometimes."

"Yes, yes; we all are that. I was very impertinent to you at dinner in
trying to catch you with Martial his epigram, though I shall not offend
again. But his humour may be generally tranquil in spite of it. Well, if
that is so, I do not see why you need trouble about the Holy Maid. He
would likely have been a monk without that.