“And see again! The devil that came out of the dumb man. What use is snout or bill to _him_? He’d be faceless as a leper. Above all--God send I live to do it!--the devils that entered the Gadarene swine. They’d be--they’d be--I know not yet what they’d be, but they’d be surpassing devils. I’d have ’em diverse as the Saints themselves. But now, they’re all one pattern, for wall, window, or picture-work.” “Go on, John. You’re deeper in this mystery than I.” “Heaven forbid! But I say there’s respect due to devils, damned tho’ they be.” “Dangerous doctrine.” “My meaning is that if the shape of anything be worth man’s thought to picture to man, it’s worth his best thought.” “That’s safer. But I’m glad I’ve given you Absolution.” “There’s less risk for a craftsman who deals with the outside shapes of things--for Mother Church’s glory.” “Maybe so, but John”--the Abbot’s hand almost touched John’s sleeve--“tell me, now, is--is she Moorish or--or Hebrew?” “She’s mine,” John returned. “Is that enough?” “I have found it so.” “Well--ah well! It’s out of my jurisdiction but--how do they look at it down yonder?” “Oh, they drive nothing to a head in Spain--neither Church nor King, bless them! There’s too many Moors and Jews to kill them all, and if they chased ’em away there’d be no trade nor farming. Trust me, in the Conquered Countries, from Seville to Granada, we live lovingly enough together--Spaniard, Moor, and Jew. Ye see, _we_ ask no questions.” “Yes--yes,” Stephen sighed. “And always there’s the hope, she may be converted.” “Oh yes, there’s always hope.” The Abbot went on into the hospital. It was an easy age before Rome tightened the screw as to clerical connections. If the lady were not too forward, or the son too much his father’s beneficiary in ecclesiastical preferments and levies, a good deal was overlooked. But, as the Abbot had reason to recall, unions between Christian and Infidel led to sorrow. None the less, when John with mule, mails, and man, clattered off down the lane for Southampton and the sea, Stephen envied him. * * * * * He was back, twenty months later, in good hard case, and loaded down with fairings. A lump of richest lazuli, a bar of orange-hearted vermilion, and a small packet of dried beetles which make most glorious scarlet, for the Sub-Cantor. Besides that, a few cubes of milky marble, with yet a pink flush in them, which could be slaked and ground down to incomparable background-stuff. There were quite half the drugs that the Abbot and Thomas had demanded, and there was a long deep-red cornelian necklace for the Abbot’s Lady--Anne of Norton. She received it graciously, and asked where John had come by it. “Near Granada,” he said. “You left all well there?” Anne asked. (Maybe the Abbot had told her something of John’s confession.) “I left all in the hands of God.” “Ah me! How long since?” “Four months less eleven days.” “Were you--with her?” “In my arms. Childbed.”