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.