means? What the Holy Office means?"

I kept silence for a moment, then I told her as well as I
might, without fever and without melancholy, what I had
written and of the Dominican.

"You have been," she said, "an imprudent cavalier."

The fountain flashed below us, a gray dove flew over
garden. I said, "There is a text, `With all thy getting,
get understanding.' There is another, `For God so loved
the world'--that He wished to impart understanding."

She sat quiet, seeming to listen to the fountain. Then
she said, "Are you ready to avow when they ask you that
in every particular to which the Grand Inquisitor may point
you are wrong, and that all that Holy Church through mouth
of Holy Office says is right?"

I said, "No, Madam! Present Church is not as large as
Truth, nor as fair as Beauty."

"You may think that, but will you say the other?"

"Say that church or kingdom exactly matches Truth and
Beauty?"

"That is what I am sure you will have to say."

"Then, no!"