On Everything
others and remained sane and whole. He was again touched by the glass in the Lady Chapel, and noted that it was of a different colour to the other and paler, so that he liked it less. I told him it was Spanish, and this apparently explained the matter to him, for he changed his face at once and began to give me the reason of its inferiority.
He had not been in Spain, but he had evidently read much about the country, which was moribund. He pointed out to me the unnatural attitude of the figures in this glass, and contrasted its half-tones with the full-blooded colours of the modern work behind us, and he was particularly careful to note the irregularity of the lettering and the dates in this glass compared with the other which had so greatly struck him. I was interested in his fixed convictions relative to the Spaniards, but just as I was about to question him further upon that race I began to have my doubts whether the glass were not French. It was plainly later than the Reformation, and I should have guessed the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century. But I hid the misgiving in my heart, lest the little trust in me which my companion still had should vanish altogether.
We went out of the great building slowly, and he repeatedly turned to look back up it, and to admire the proportions. He asked me the exact height of the central spire, and as I could not tell him this I felt ashamed, but he told me he would find it in a book, and I assured him this could be
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