n of the
sin and self level. These unseen wings are either paralyzed or clipped.
Plume now actually stepped toward me. What a graceful tread. She was
indeed the most charming creature I had met outside of my own world. She
seated herself near me on the rustic bend of a tree unlike any in our
world and hurried her questions at me as if she realized that I would
not tarry long. At length she gratefully said:
"I am beginning to believe that you are really a son of another world,
or else I am reveling in a day dream."
"Happy am I that I can learn from you some of the truths after which I
am seeking," was my evasive reply. "Tell me, Plume, something about your
faith religiously."
"I worship the God who made all things and am hoping to live in the
wider life after my mortal days are ended."
"Do you expect to meet, in that wider life, representatives from other
worlds?"
"Ah! I have often thought that it might be so," she answered, as her
face brightened in poetic fervor, and her eyes sparkled with seraphic
luster.
"It shall all be so, and much more," I declared. "In that life you can
fly without wings and mingle with the pure from the unnumbered worlds of
space."
"What an incentive to a pure life," she quickly added.
"Talking of wings, do you object if I see more closely the cut and style
of your wings? I never saw before a human creature possessing a pair."
After a moment's hesitancy she raised her right arm and with it the one
wing unfolded. I ventured near enough to see the intricate network of
muscle and bone woven around the arm and filling the space between the
raised arm and the side of Plume's body. She was surprised at the
interest I manifested in the human wing. After this she offered to
furnish an able escort to conduct me to several points of interest.
All this I declined and informed my talented friend that I must hasten
away to another world.
"Let me go with you," she strongly insisted.
"Your wings are not of the right kind," I replied hurriedly.
"They are strong enough to bear us both," were her inviting words.
"But not beyond the atmosphere of this world," I explained.
I quietly arose, scanned once more the beautiful valley before me, and
indicated that I was about to wane into the invisible. Then did her
womanly nature assert its supremacy and she, for the first time, touched
my hand imploringly:
"Have I been dreaming, or do my eyes deceive me? How can all this be
true? Y
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