that is, beasts, the change always comes first in their hands - and
first of all in the inside hands, to which the outside ones are but
as the gloves. They do not know it of course; for a beast does not
know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast
the less he knows it. Neither can their best friends, or their
worst enemies indeed, see any difference in their hands, for they
see only the living gloves of them. But there are not a few who
feel a vague something repulsive in the hand of a man who is
growing a beast.

'Now here is what the rose-fire has done for you: it has made your
hands so knowing and wise, it has brought your real hands so near
the outside of your flesh gloves, that you will henceforth be able
to know at once the hand of a man who is growing into a beast; nay,
more - you will at once feel the foot of the beast he is growing,
just as if there were no glove made like a man's hand between you
and it.

'Hence of course it follows that you will be able often, and with
further education in zoology, will be able always to tell, not only
when a man is growing a beast, but what beast he is growing to, for
you will know the foot - what it is and what beast's it is.
According, then, to your knowledge of that beast will be your
knowledge of the man you have to do with. Only there is one
beautiful and awful thing about it, that if any one gifted with
this perception once uses it for his own ends, it is taken from
him, and then, not knowing that it is gone, he is in a far worse
condition than before, for he trusts to what he has not got.'

'How dreadful!' Said Curdie. 'I must mind what I am about.'