“If you could express all that you feel you would not feel enough to be greatly worth expressing. It is neither slain nor deformed, but to you the wings that bore it to you seem clipped. Perhaps they may be, since your conception of it must exceed words, but you have made the rush of those wings audible to others.” Anne arose as she spoke and rang for tea. She was used to dealing with the poet’s reaction from the delight of creation; she understood it. “How you help me!” Richard smiled at her and put out his hand; Anne’s skirt brushed it as she crossed the room. “It’s a hard thing to feel one minute like a tower reaching to heaven, and the next like a toppled card house.” “Yes, it’s hard, but it doesn’t really matter, because you know it’s only nervous reaction. It would matter if you took the tower or the card house seriously, especially the tower! But you never lose your perspective. It’s a great deal to be a perfectly sane great poet!” Anne laughed, and added, “Little Anne has been meekly sitting on the steps for some time. I signalled her to wait until you were finished. Shall I call her now?” “Surely. Little Anne is as good a restorative as tea,” said Richard. The little girl came in on her summons with a flushed and happy face; she at once accepted Richard’s invitation to perch on the arm of his chair, though she first violently hugged Anne Dallas. “I’ve been to instructions,” she replied to Richard’s question. “Yes, I am warm; I am very warm, I am so warm that I’m boiling hot, only I’m not to say that. It’s a pity. I think it’s one of the worst things that ain’t--are not--sickness, or dying, or op’rations, or something, that you can’t use strong words. I think it makes you hotter’n fury to be just about roasted and say you’re warm!” Richard threw back his head and joined in Anne Dallas’s laughter. “You often remind me of Margery Fleming, little Anne, and it seems that you share her love of strong language! I think myself it’s a useful safety valve. What instructions are you getting?” “I don’t mean swearing, not blasphemy,” said little Anne, looking shocked by the idea. “I mean words that sort of rip and hit things. I wouldn’t swear, not for worlds! And I’m going to First Communion instructions.” Little Anne bent her head as she said this and her thin, flashing, elfin face took on an awed look, awe that her voice expressed. “At your age?” cried Richard. “Why, Anne, you are too young! When I knew about these things we did not join the church before we were fourteen.”