“And that my morals were corrupted by him,” went on More.  “I know he thinks that, but I had the honour of confuting him the other day with regard to the flagon and gloves.  Now, there is a subject for Martial, Mr. Torridon.  A corrupt statesman who has retired on his ill-gotten gains disproves an accusation of bribery.  Let us call him Atticus ‘Attice ...  Attice’ ...—­We might say that he put on the gloves lest his forgers should be soiled while he drank from the flagon, or something of the kind.”

Sir Thomas’s eyes beamed with delight as he talked.  To make an apt classical quotation was like wine to him, but to have it capped appropriately was like drunkenness.  Ralph blessed his stars that he had been so lucky, for he was no great scholar, and he guessed he had won his host’s confidence.

Dinner passed on quietly, and as they rose from table More came round and took his guest by the arm.

“You must come with me and see my New Building,” he said, “you are worthy of it, Mr. Torridon.”

He still held his arm affectionately as they walked out into the garden behind the house, and as he discoursed on the joys of a country life.

“What more can I ask of God?” he said.  “He has given me means and tastes to correspond, and what man can say more.  I see 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?”