“I have just been reading,” he said, “Saint Teresa’s description of the difference between the intellectual and the imaginative vision. It is curious how she fails really to express it, except to any one who happens to have had a glimpse already for himself of what she means. I suppose it is one of the signs of reality in the spiritual world that no one can ever describe so much as he knows.” I sat down. “I am afraid I don’t understand a word you are saying,” I answered smiling. For answer he opened the book and read Saint Teresa’s curious gasping incoherent sentences––at least so I thought them. “Still,” I said, “I am afraid––––” “Oh,” he said almost impatiently, “surely you know now; indeed you know it, but do not recognise it.” “Can you give me any sort of instance?” I asked. He thought for a moment or two in silence; and then–––– “I think I can,” he said, “if you are sure it will not bore you.” He poured out tea for us both, and then began: “Most of the tales I have told you are of the imaginative vision, by which I do not mean that the vision is in any way unreal or untrue, which is what most people mean by ‘imaginative,’ but only that it presents itself in the form of a visible picture. It seems chiefly the function of the imagination to visualise facts, and it is an abuse of that faculty to employ it chiefly in visualising fancies. But it is possible for spiritual facts to represent themselves vividly and clearly to the intellect instead, so that the person to whom the intellectual vision is given does not, so to speak, ‘see’ anything, but only ‘apprehends’ something to be true. However, this will become more clear presently. “Some years ago I took my annual holiday in the form of a solitary walking tour. I will not tell you where I went, as there are others concerned in this story who would dislike intensely to be publicly spoken of in the way that I shall have to speak of them; but it is enough to say that I came at last to a little town towards sunset. My object in coming to this place was to visit a convent of enclosed nuns whose reputation for holiness was very great. I carried with me a letter of introduction to the Reverend Mother, which I knew would admit me to the chapel. I left my bag at the inn, and then walked down to the convent, which stood a little way out of the town. “The lay sister who opened the door to me asked me to come into the parlour while she told the Reverend Mother; and after waiting a few minutes in the prim room with its bees-waxed floor and its religious engravings and objects, a wonderfully dignified little old lady, with a quiet wrinkled face, came in with my letter open in her hand. We talked a few minutes about various things, and I had a glass of cowslip wine in a thick-lipped wineglass.