ervants 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 co