Charlotte Welles looked up with such gentle understanding of her bitterness and hurt that Anne wanted to strike her. What right had this woman to penetrate one's mood, to be always down there under the surface of one's thoughts? It was as if she had entered a room locked against her.
"Why, Annie!"
Anne ignored Hilda and went on in a rapid, cracking voice.
"How on earth you can believe such rubbish, I don't know. And to call it science! If science is anything, it's the seeking of effect from cause. Something happens, and you burrow far enough down under the surface and find the cause. A woman loses everything in the world she cared about and—she sings for joy! She never loved her husband or children nor enjoyed her wealth."
"She did—all three. She was a loyal wife, a devoted mother, and I never knew any one do as much good with their money, or use it to finer purpose."
"Then she's lying," Anne went on, "she's hysterical and unbalanced by grief. It's not peace she's found, it's a delusion."
"It is no delusion. It is peace, the peace that comes from understanding."
"'The peace that passes understanding.'"
"That passes understanding—until you find it."
"And no sane person ever will find it in—'Science and Health'."