before. They will admire your cleverness very much, but the next moment
you will find the witch sobbing over Tennyson, or the wizard smiling at
the quaint fancies of Sir Edwin Landseer. You cannot really stir up
magic people with ordinary human people. You and I have climbed over our
thousand lives to a too dreadfully subtle eminence. In our day--in our
many days--we have adored everything conceivable, and now we have to
fall back on the inconceivable. We stand our idols on their heads, it is
newer to do so, and we think we prefer them upside down. Talking
constantly, we reel blindfold through eternity, and perhaps if we are
lucky, once or twice in a score of lives, the blindfolding handkerchief
slips, and we wriggle one eye free, and see gods like trees walking. By
Jove, that gives us enough to talk about for two or three lives! Witches
and wizards are not blinded by having a Point of View. They just look,
and are very much surprised and interested.

All witches and wizards are born strangely and die violently. They are
descended always from old mysterious breeds, from women who wrought
domestic magic and perished for its sake, and from men who wrought other
magic among lost causes and wars without gain, and fell and died, still
surprised, still interested, with their faces among flowers. All men who
die so are not wizards, nor are all martyred and adventuring women
witches, but all such bring a potential strain of magic into their line.

"A witch," said Sarah Brown. "Of course. I have been trying to remember
what broomsticks reminded me of. A witch, of course. I have always
wished to be friends with a witch."

The witch was unaware that the proper answer to this was: "Oh, my Dear,
_do_ let's. Do you know I had quite a _crush_ on you from the first
minute." She did not answer at all, and Sarah Brown, who was tired of