"I declare I don't know, Daisy! I think it means a person who is too
good for this world, and therefore isn't allowed to live here. 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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