“Talk to me,” said the nun.

“Well?” said Beatrice.

“Tell me about your life in London.  You never have yet, you know.”

An odd look passed over the others face, and she dropped her eyes and laid her hands together in her lap.

“Oh, Meg,” she said, “I should love to tell you if I could.  What would you like to hear?”

The nun looked at her wondering.

“Why—­everything,” she said.

“Shall I tell you of Chelsea and Master More?”

Margaret nodded, still looking at her; and Beatrice began.

It was an extraordinary experience for the nun to sit there and hear that wonderful tale poured out.  Beatrice for the first time threw open her defences—­those protections of the sensitive inner life that she had raised by sheer will—­and showed her heart.  She told her first of her life in the country before she had known anything of the world; of her father’s friendship with More when she was still a child, and of his death when she was about sixteen.  She had had money of her own, and had come up to live with Mrs. More’s sisters; and so had gradually slipped into intimacy at Chelsea.  Then she described the life there—­the ordered beauty of it all—­and the marvellous soul that was its centre and sun.  She told her of More’s humour, his unfailing gaiety, his sweet cynicism that shot through his talk, his tender affections, and above all—­for she knew this would most interest the nun—­his deep and resolute devotion to God.  She described how he had at one time lived at the Charterhouse, and had seemed to regret, before the end of his life, that he had not become a Carthusian; she told her of the precious parcel that had been sent from the Tower to Chelsea the day before his death, and how she had helped Margaret Roper to unfasten it and disclose the hair-shirt that he had worn secretly for years, and which now he had sent back for fear that it should be seen by unfriendly eyes or praised by flattering tongues.

Her face grew inexpressibly soft and loving as she talked; more than once her black eyes filled with tears, and her voice faltered; and the nun sat almost terrified at the emotion she had called up.  It was hardly possible that this tender feminine creature who talked so softly of divine and human things and of the strange ardent lawyer in whom both were so manifest, could be the same stately lady of downstairs who fenced so gallantly, who never winced at a wound and trod so bravely over sharp perilous ground.

“They killed him,” said Beatrice.  “King Henry killed him; for that he could not bear an honest, kindly, holy soul so near his own.  And we are left to weep for him, of whom—­of whom the world was not worthy.”

Margaret felt her hand caught and caressed; and the two sat in silence a moment.

“But—­but—­” began the nun softly, bewildered by this revelation.

“Yes, my dear; you did not know—­how should you?—­what a wound I carry here—­what a wound we all carry who knew him.”