They all go off in flames of some sort — may look
like glory, but is very uncomfortable — and there is a
peculiar odour about them. Doctor, what is that odour called?"
Gary spoke with absurd soberness, but the doctor gave him no
attention.
"The odour of sanctity! — that is it!" said Gary. "I had
forgot. I don't know what it is like, myself; but it must be
very disagreeable to have such a peculiarity attached to one."
"How can anybody be too good for this world?" Daisy ventured.
"Too good to live in it! You can't live among people unless
you live like them — so the saints all leave the rest of the
world in some way or other; the children die, and the grown
ones go missionaries or become nuns — they are a sort of human
meteor — shine and disappear, but don't really accomplish
much, because no one wants to be meteors. So your old woman
can't be a saint, Daisy, or she would have quitted the world
long ago."
Something called off Gary. Daisy was left feeling very
thoroughly disturbed. That people could talk so — and think so
— about what was so precious to her; talk about being saints,
as if it were an undesirable thing; and as if such were
unlovely. Her thought went back to Juanita, who seemed now
half a world's distance away instead of a few miles; her love
and gentleness and truth and wisdom, her prayers and way of
living, did seem to Daisy somewhat unearthly in their beauty,
compared with that which surrounded her now; but so unearthly,
that it could not be understood, and must not be talked about.
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