I said that I had climbed there one day. "I dream a painting!"
he said, "The Quest of the Grail. Now I see it running
over the four walls of a church, and now I see it all
packed into one man who rides. Then again it has seemed
to me truer to have it in a man and woman who walk, or
perhaps even are seated. What do you think?"

I was thinking of Isabel who died in my arms twenty
years ago. "I would have it man and woman," I said.
Unless, like Messer Leonardo, you can put both in one."

He sat still, his mind working, while in a fair inner land
Isabel and I moved together; then in a meditative quiet he
finished his drawing. He himself was admirable, fine gold
and bronze, sapphire-eyed, with a face where streams of
visions moved the muscles, and all against the blue and the
willow tree.

At last he put away pencil, and at his gesture I came from
the boat and the reeds. I looked at what he had drawn, and
then he shut book and, the mule following us, we moved
back to the road.

"My dear fisherman," he said, "you are trudging afoot
and your dress exhibits poverty. Painters may paint Jove
descending in showers of golden pesos and yet have few
pesos in purse. I have at present ten. I should like to
share them with you who have done me various good turns
to-day."