She looked troubled. I hastened to
relieve her.
"When women have wings," I said, "their logic will be good."
"How do you make that out, papa?" she asked, a little re-assured.
"Because then every shadow of feeling that turns your speech aside from the
straight course will be recognised in that speech; the whole utterance will
be instinct not only with the meaning of what you are thinking, but with
the reflex of the forces in you that make the utterance take this or that
shape; just as to a perfect palate, the source and course of a stream would
be revealed in every draught of its water.
"I have just a glimmering of your meaning, papa. Would you like to have
wings?"
"I should like to fly like a bird, to swim like a fish, to gallop like a
horse, to creep like a serpent, but I suspect the good of all these is to
be got without doing any of them."
"I know what you mean now, but I can't put it in words."
"I mean by a perfect sympathy with the creatures that do these things: what
it may please God to give to ourselves, we can quite comfortably leave to
him. A higher stratum of the same kind is the need we feel of knowing our
fellow-creatures through and through, of walking into and out of their
worlds as if we were, because we are, perfectly at home in them.
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