'She might have been admitted to the Hotel Rambouillet, without being anything of a Precieuse. She is the woman of the largest heart now beating.'
'Mr. Redworth talked of her.'
'As she deserved, I am sure.'
'Very warmly.'
'He would!'
'He told me you were the Damon and Pythias of women.'
'Her one fault is an extreme humility that makes her always play second to me; and as I am apt to gabble, I take the lead; and I am froth in comparison. I can reverence my superiors even when tried by intimacy with them. She is the next heavenly thing to heaven that I know. Court her, if ever you come across her. Or have you a man's horror of women with brains?'
'Am I expressing it?' said he.
'Do not breathe London or Paris here on me.' She fanned the crocuses under her chin. 'The early morning always has this—I wish I had a word!—touch... whisper... gleam... beat of wings—I envy poets now more than ever!—of Eden, I was going to say. Prose can paint evening and moonlight, but poets are needed to sing the dawn. That is because prose is equal to melancholy stuff. Gladness requires the finer language. Otherwise we have it coarse—anything but a reproduction. You politicians despise the little distinctions “twixt tweedledum and tweedledee,” I fancy.'
Of the poetic sort, Dacier's uncle certainly did. For himself he confessed to not having thought much on them.