Ellen liked the idea of these hard, crystalline things, which were formed in intense heat beneath the “habitable surface” of the earth, and were not primeval monuments but “part of the living language of nature.” I am no ordinary or hysterical self-deceiver, she more or less said to herself. I keep faith with the fire and the crystals, I do not pretend the habitable surface is all and so I am not a destroyer nor cast into outer darkness.
