hours on all fours observing them.  But an Annalise—­what was she to make of such a place?  Is it not true that the less a person has inside him of culture and imagination the more he wants outside him of the upholstery of life?  I think it is true; and if it is, then the vacancy of Annalise’s mind may be measured by the fact that what she demanded of life in return for the negative services of not crying and wringing her hands was nothing less filled with food and sofas and servants than a grand ducal palace.

But neither Priscilla nor Fritzing knew anything of Annalise’s mind, and if they had they would instantly have forgotten it again, of such extreme unimportance would it have seemed.  Nor would I dwell on it myself if it were not that its very vacancy and smallness was the cause of huge upheavals in Creeper Cottage, and the stone that the builders ignored if they did not actually reject behaved as such stones sometimes do and came down upon the builders’ heads and crushed them.  Annalise, you see, was unable to appreciate peace, yet on the other hand she was very able to destroy the peace of other people; and Priscilla meant her cottage to be so peaceful—­a temple, a holy place, within whose quiet walls sacred years were going to be spent in doing justly, in loving mercy, in walking humbly.  True she had not as yet made a nearer acquaintance with its inconveniences, but anyhow she held the theory that inconveniences were things to be laughed at and somehow circumvented, and that they do not enter into the consideration of persons whose thoughts are absorbed by the burning desire to live out their ideals.  “You can be happy in any place whatever,” she remarked to Tussie on the Monday, when he was expressing fears as to her future comfort; “absolutely any place will do—­a tub, a dingle, the top of a pillar—­any place at all, if only your soul is on fire.”

“Of course you can,” cried Tussie, ready to kiss her feet.

“And look how comfortable my cottage seems,” said Priscilla, “directly one compares it with things like tubs.”

“Yes, yes,” agreed Tussie, “I do see that it’s enough for free spirits to live in.  I was only wondering whether—­whether bodies would find it enough.”

“Oh bother bodies,” said Priscilla airily.

But Tussie could not bring himself to bother bodies if they included her own; on the contrary, the infatuated young man thought it would be difficult sufficiently to cherish a thing so supremely precious and sweet.  And each time he went home after having been in the frugal baldness of Creeper Cottage he hated the superfluities of his own house more and more, he accused himself louder and louder of being mean-spirited, effeminate, soft, vulgar, he loathed himself for living embedded in such luxury while she, the dear and lovely one, was ready cheerfully to pack her beauty into a tub if needs be, or let it be weather-beaten on a pillar for thirty years if by so doing she could save her