On another occasion, an orchard in bloom, filling a green hollow between two woods, had made Eve stand gazing.
“Isn’t that perfect?”
Lizzie Straker saw nothing but what her mad prejudices were allowing her to see.
“I should like to come along with an axe and chop down all those trees. It would make quite a good protest.”
Eve had felt satirical.
“Why shouldn’t we blow up Chanctonbury Ring?”
And they had taken her seriously.
“We should want such a lot of dynamite.”
“But it’s an idea, quite an idea.”
At the small town of Battle they had thirsted to blow up the great abbey gateway, while Eve was letting her eyes take in all the grey beauty of the stonework warmed by the evening sunlight. These two women had “a mad” against property. Protest by violence was becoming an obsession with them. They were like hostile troops marching through a rich and hated land.