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.
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