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"Now you are laughing at me with your superior man-wisdom," she
retorted. "But I know--" she paused for the strength of words she
needed, and words forsook her, so that her quick sweeping gesture of
hand-touch to heart named authority that overrode all speech.
"We agree--I salute," he laughed gaily. "It was just precisely what
I was saying. Our hearts can talk our heads down almost any time,
and, best all, our hearts are always right despite the statistic
that they are mostly wrong."
Harley Kennan did not believe, and never did believe, his wife's
report of the tales Jerry told. And through all his days to the
last one of them, he considered the whole matter a pleasant fancy,
all poesy of sentiment, on Villa's part.
But Jerry, four-legged, smooth-coated, Irish terrier that he was,
had the gift of tongues. If he could not teach languages, at least
he could learn languages. Without effort, and quickly, practically
with no teaching, he began picking up the language of the Ariel.
Unfortunately, it was not a whiff-whuff, dog-possible language such
as Nalasu had invented. While Jerry came to understand much that
was spoken on the Ariel, he could speak none of it. Three names, at
least, he had for the lady-god: "Villa," "Wife-Woman," "Missis
Kennan," for so he heard her variously called. But he could not so
call her. This was god-language entire, which only gods could talk.
It was unlike the language of Nalasu's devising, which had been a
compromise between god-talk and dog-talk, so that a god and a dog
could talk in the common medium.
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