* * * * *

His first business was to rule the thick red lines down the side of the
text, using a special metal pen for it; and then to begin to sketch in
his initials and decorations. For this latter part of the work he had
decided to follow the lines of Foucquet from a Book of the Hours that he
had taken out of its aumbry; a mass of delicate foliage and leaves, with
medallions set in it united by twisted thorn-branches twining upwards
through the broad border. These medallions on the first sheet he
purposed to fill with miniatures of the famous relics kept at Lewes, the
hanging sleeve of the Blessed Virgin in its crystal case, the
drinking-cup of Cana, the rod of Moses, and the Magdalene's box of
ointment. In the later pages which would be less elaborate he would
introduce the other relics, and allow his humour free play in designing
for the scrolls at the foot tiny portraits of his brethren; the Prior
should be in a mitre and have the legs and tail of a lion, the
novice-master, with a fox's brush emerging from his flying cowl, should
be running from a hound who carried a discipline in his near paw. But
there was time yet to think of these things; it would be weeks before
that page could be reached, and meanwhile there was the foliage to be
done, and the rose leaf that lay on his desk to be copied minutely from
a hundred angles.

* * * * *

His distractions at mass and office were worse than ever now that the
great work was begun, and week after week in confession there was the
same tale. The mere process was so absorbing, apart from the joy of
creation and design. More than once he woke from a sweating nightmare in
the long dormitory, believing that he had laid on gold-leaf without