For
there has been coincidence here, a coincidence that must be rare. The
site on which this modern house now stands was Roman, before that Early
Britain, with burial mounds, before that again, Druid--the Druid stones
still lie in that copse below the field, the Tumuli among the ilexes
behind the drive. The older building Sam Franklyn altered and
practically pulled down was a monastery; he changed the chapel into a
meeting hall, which is now the music room; but, before he came here, the
house was occupied by Manetti, a violent Catholic without tolerance or
vision; and in the interval between these two, Julius Weinbaum had it,
Hebrew of most rigid orthodox type imaginable--so they all have left
their--"
"Even so," I repeated, yet interested to hear the rest, "what of it?"
"Simply this," said Frances with conviction, "that each in turn has left
his layer of concentrated thinking and belief behind him; because each
believed intensely, absolutely, beyond the least weakening of any doubt
--the kind of strong belief and thinking that is rare anywhere today, the
kind that wills, impregnates objects, saturates the atmosphere, haunts,
in a word. And each, believing he was utterly and finally right, damned
with equally positive conviction the rest of the world.
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