"Well," Clara remarked triumphantly, "I don't have to think in order to have the men about me. I'm very glad of that."

This was true. The second year of their stay in Angel Island, the other four women had rebuked Clara for this tendency to keep men about her—without thinking.

"It is not necessary for us to think," said Peachy with a sudden, spirited lift of her head from her shoulders. The movement brought back some of her old-time vivacity and luster. Her thick, brilliant, springy hair seemed to rise a little from her forehead. And under her draperies that which remained of what had once been wings stirred faintly. "They must think just as they must walk because they are earth-creatures. They cannot exist without infinite care and labor. We don't have to think any more than we have to walk; for we are air-creatures. And air-creatures only fly and feel. We are superior to them."

"Peachy," Julia said again. Her voice thrilled as though some thought, long held quiescent within her, had burst its way to expression. It rang like a bugle. It vibrated like a violin-string. "That is the mistake we've made all our lives; a mistake that has held us here tied to this camp for or four our years; the idea that we are superior in some way, more strong, more beautiful, more good than they. But think a moment! Are we? True, we are as you say, creatures of the air. True, we were born with wings. But didn't we have to come down to the earth to eat and sleep, to love, to marry, and to bear our young? Our trouble is that—"

And just then, "Here they come!" Lulu cried happily.

Lulu's eyes turned away from the group of women. Her brown face had lighted as though somebody had placed a torch beside it. The strings of little dimples that her plumpness had brought in its wake played about her mouth.

The trail that emerged from the jungle ran between bushes, and gradually grew lower and lower, until it merged with a path shooting straight across the sand to the Playground.

For a while the heads of the file of men appeared above the bushes; then came shoulders, waists, knees; finally the entire figures. They strode through the jungle with the walk of conquerors.

They were so absorbed in talk as not to realize that the camp was in sight. Every woman's eye—and some subtle revivifying excitement temporarily dispersed the discontent there—had found her mate long before he remembered to look in her direction.

The children heard the voices and immediately raced, laughing and shouting, to meet their fathers. Angela, beating her pinions in a very frenzy of haste, arrived first. She fluttered away from outstretched arms until she reached Ralph; he lifted her to his breast, carried her snuggled there, his lips against her hair. Honey and Pete absently swung their sons to their shoulders and went on talking. Junior, tired out by his exertions, sat down plumply half-way. Grinning radiantly, he waited for the procession to overtake him.

"Peachy," Julia asked in an aside, "have you ever asked Ralph what he intends to do about Angela's wings?"

"What he intends to do?" Peachy echoed. "What do you mean? What can he intend to do? What has he to say about them, anyway?"

"He may not intend anything," Julia answered gravely. "Still, if I were you, I'd have a talk with him."

Time had brought its changes to the five men as to the five women; but they were not such devastating changes.

Honey led the march, a huge wreath of uprooted blossoming plants hanging about his neck. He was at the prime of his strength, the zenith of his beauty and, in the semi-nudity that the climate permitted, more than ever like a young wood-god. Health shone from his skin in a copper-bronze that seemed to overlay the flesh like armor. Happiness shone from his eyes in a fire-play that seemed never to die down. One year more and middle age might lay its dulling finger upon him. But now he positively flared with youth.

Close behind Honey came Billy Fairfax, still shock-headed, his blond hair faded to tow, slimmer, more serious, more fine. His eyes ran ahead of the others, found Julia's face, lighted up. His gaze lingered there in a tender smile.

Just over Billy's shoulder, Pete appeared, a Pete as thin and nervous as ever, the incipient black beard still prickling in tiny ink-spots through a skin stained a deep mahogany. There was some subtle change in Pete that was not of the flesh but of the spirit. Perhaps the look in his face—doubly wild of a Celt and of a genius—had tamed a little. But in its place had come a question: undoubtedly he had gained in spiritual dignity and in humorous quality.

Ralph Addington followed Pete. And Ralph also had changed. True, he retained his inalienable air of elegance, an elegance a little too sartorial. And even after six years of the jungle, he maintained his picturesqueness. Long-haired, liquid-eyed, still with a beard symmetrically pointed and a mustache carefully cropped, he was more than ever like a young girl's idea of an artist. And yet something different had come into his face, The slight touch of gray in his wavy hair did not account for it; nor the lines, netting delicately his long-lashed eyes. The eyes themselves bore a baffled expression, half of revolt, half of resignation; as one who has at last found the immovable obstacle, who accepts the situation even while he rebels against it.

At the end of the line came Merrill, a doubly transformed man, looking at the same time younger and handsomer. Bigger and even more muscular than formerly, his eyes were wide open and sparkling, his mouth had lost its rigidity of contour. His look of severity, of asceticism had vanished. Nothing but his classic regularity remained and that had been beautifully colored by the weather.

The five couples wound through the trail which led from the Playground to the Camp, the men half-carrying their wives with one arm about their waists and the other supporting them.

The Camp had changed. The original cabins had spread by an addition of one or two or three to sprawling bungalow size. Not an atom of their wooden structure showed. Blocks of green, cubes of color, only open doorways and windows betrayed that they were dwelling-places. A tide of tropical jungle beat in waves of green with crests of rainbow up to the very walls. There it was met by a backwash of the vines which embowered the cabins, by a stream of blossoms which flooded and cascaded down their sides.

The married ones stopped at the Camp. But Billy and Julia continued up the beach.

"How did the work go to-day, Honey?" Lulu asked in a perfunctory tone as they moved away from the Playground.

"Fine!" Honey answered enthusiastically.

"You wait until you see Recreation Hall." He stopped to light his pipe. "Lord, how I wish I had some real tobacco! It's going to be a corker. We've decided to enlarge the plan by another three feet."

"Have you really?" commented Lulu. "Dear me, you've torn your shirt again."

"Yes," said Honey, puffing violently, "a nail. And we're going to have a tennis court at one side not a little squeezed-up affair like this—but a big, fine one. We're going to lay out a golf course, too. That will be some job, Mrs. Holworthy D. Smith, and don't you forget it."

"Yes, I should think it would be," agreed Lulu. "Do you know, Honey, Clara's an awful cat! She's dreadfully jealous of Peachy. The things she says to her! She knows Pete's still half in love with her. Peachy understands him on his art side as Clara can't. Clara simply hands it to Pete if he looks at Peachy. Even when she knows that he knows, that we all know, that she tried her best to start a flirtation with you."

"And to-day," Honey interrupted eagerly, "we doped out a scheme for a series of canals to run right round the whole place—with gardens on the bank. You see we can pipe the lake water and——."

"That will be great," said Lulu, but there was no enthusiasm in her tone. "And really, Honey, Peachy's in a dreadful state of nerves. Of course, she knows that Ralph is still crazy about Julia and always will be, just because Julia's like a stone to him—oh, you know the kind of a man Ralph is. The only woman you can depend on him to be faithful to is the one that won't have him round. I don't think that bothers Peachy, though. She adores Julia. If she could fly a little while in the afternoon—an hour, say—I know it would cure her."

"Too bad. But, of course, we couldn't let you girls fly again. Besides, I doubt very much if, after so many cuttings, your wings would ever grow big enough. You don't realize it yourself, perhaps, but you're much more healthy and normal without wings."

"I don't mind being without them so much myself"—Lulu's tone was a little doubtful—"though I think they would help me with Honey-Boy and Honey-Bunch. Sometimes—." She did not finish.

"And then," Honey went on decidedly, "it's not natural for women to fly. God never intended them to."

"It is wonderful," Lulu said admiringly, "how men know exactly what God intended."

Honey roared. "If you'd ever heard the term sarcasm, my dear, I should think you were slipping something over on me. In point of fact, we don't know what God intended. Nobody does. But we know better than you; the man's life broadens us."

"Then I should think—" Lulu began. But again she did not finish.

"We're going to make a tower of rocks on the central island of the lake," Honey went on. "We'll drag the stones from the beach—those big, beauty round ones. When it's finished, we're going to cover it with that vine which has the scarlet, butterfly flowers. Pete says the reflections in the water will be pretty neat."

"Really. It sounds charming. And, Honey, Chiquita is so lazy. Little Junior runs wild. He's nearly two and she hasn't made a strip of clothing for him yet. It's Frank's fault, though. He never notices anything. I really think you men ought to do something about that."

"And then," Honey went on. But he stopped. "What's the use?" he muttered under his breath. He subsided, enveloped himself in a cloud of smoke and listened, half-amused, half-irritated, to Lulu's pauseless, squirrel-like chatter.

"My dear," Frank Merrill said to Chiquita after dinner, "the New Camp is growing famously. Six months more and you will be living in your new home. The others—Pete especially—are very much interested in Recreation Hall. They have just worked out a new scheme for parks and gardens. It is very interesting, though purely decorative. It offers many absorbing problems. But, for my own part, I must confess I am more interested in the library. It will be most gratifying to see all our books ranged on shelves, classified and catalogued at last. It is a good little library as amateur libraries go. The others speak again and again of my foresight during those early months in taking care of the books. We have many fine books—what people call solid reading—and a really extraordinary collection of dictionaries. You see, many scholars travel in the Orient, and they feel they must get up on all kinds of things. I suggested to-day that we draw up a constitution for Angel Island. For by the end of twenty years, there will be a third generation growing up here. And then, the population will increase amazingly. Besides, it offers many subjects for discussion in our evenings at the Clubhouse, etc., etc., etc."

Holding the tired-out little junior in her lap, Chiquita rocked and fanned herself and napped—and woke—and rocked and fanned herself and napped again.

"Oh, don't bore me with any talk about the New Camp," Clara was saying to Pete. "I'm not an atom interested in it."

"But you're going to live there sometime," Pete remonstrated, wrinkling in perplexity his fiery, freckled face.

"Yes, but I don't feel as if I were. It's all so far away. And I never see it. If I had anything to say about it, I might feel differently. But I haven't. So please don't inflict it on me."

"But it's the inspiration of building it for you women," Pete said gravely, "that makes us men work like slaves. We're only doing it for your sake. It is the expression of our love and admiration for you."

"Oh, slush!" exclaimed Clara flippantly, borrowing from Honey's vocabulary. "You're building it to please yourself. Besides, I don't want to be an inspiration for anything."

"All right, then," Pete said in an aggrieved tone. "But you are an inspiration, just the same. It is the chief vocation of women." He moved over to the desk and took up a bunch of papers there.

"Oh, are you going to write again this evening?" Clara asked in a burst of despair.

"Yes." Pete hesitated. "I thought I'd work for an hour or two and then I'd go out."

Clara groaned. "If you leave me another minute of this day, I shall go mad. I've had nothing but housework all the morning and then a little talk with the girls, late this afternoon. I want something different now."

"Well, let me read the third act to you," Pete offered.

"No, I don't feel like being read to. I want some excitement."

Pete sighed, and put his manuscript down.

"All right. Let's go in swimming. But I'll have to leave you after an hour."

"Are you going to see Peachy?" Clara demanded shrilly.

"No." Pete's tone was stern. "I'm going to the Clubhouse."

"How has everything gone to-day, Billy?" Julia asked, as they sat looking out to sea.

"Rather well," Billy answered. "We were all in a working mood and all in good spirits. We've done more to-day than we've done in any three days before. At noon, while we were eating our lunch, I showed them your plans."

"You didn't say—."

"I didn't peep. I promised, you know. I let them assume that they were mine. They went wild over them, threw all kinds of fits. You see, Pete has a really fine artistic sense that's going to waste in all these minor problems of construction and drainage. I flatter myself that I, too, have some taste. Addington and Honey are both good workmen—that is, they work steadily under instruction. Merrill's only an inspired plumber, of course. Pete and I have been feeling for a long time that we wanted to do something more creative, more esthetic. This is just the thing we needed. I'm glad you thought it out; for I was beginning to grow stale. I sometimes wonder what will happen when the New Camp is entirely built and there's nothing else to do."

Billy's voice had, in spite of his temperamental optimism, a dull note of unpleasant anticipation.

"There'll be plenty to do after that." Julia smiled reassuringly. "I'm working on a plan to lay out the entire island. That will take years and years and years. Even then you'll need help."

"That, my beloved," Billy said, "until the children grow up, is just what we can't get—help."

Julia was silent.

"Julia," he went on, after an interval, in which neither spoke, "won't you marry me? I'm lonely."

The poignant look—it was almost excruciating now—came into Julia's eyes.

"Not now, Billy," she answered.

"And yet you say you love me!"

The sadness went. Julia's face became limpid as water, bright as light, warm as flame. "I love you," she said. "I love you! I love you!" She went on reiterating these three words. And with every iteration, the thrill in her voice seemed to deepen. "And, Billy—."

"Yes."

"I'm not quite sure when—but I know I'm going to marry you some time."

"I'll wait, then," Billy promised. "As long as I know you love me, I can wait until—the imagination of man has not conceived the limit yet."

"Well, how have you been to-day?" Ralph asked. But before Peachy could speak, he answered himself in a falsetto voice that parodied her round, clear accents, "I want to fly! I want to fly! I want to fly!" His tone was not ill-tempered, however; and his look was humorously a affectionate, as one who has asked the same question many times and received the same answer.

"I do want to fly, Ralph," Peachy said listlessly. "Won't you let me? Oh, please let my wings grow again?"

Ralph shook his head inflexibly. "Couldn't do it, my dear. It's not womanly. The air is no place for a woman. The earth is her home."

"That's not argument," Peachy asserted haughtily. "That's statement. Not that I want to argue the question. My argument is unanswerable. Why did we have wings, if not to fly. But I don't want to quarrel—." Her voice sank to pleading. "I'd always be here when you came back. You'd never see me flying. It would not prevent me from doing my duty as your wife or as Angela's mother. In fact, I could do it better because it would make me so happy and well. After a while, I could take Angela with me. Oh, that would be rapture!" Peachy's eyes gleamed.

Ralph shook his head. "Couldn't think of it, my dear. The clouds are no place for my wife. Besides, I doubt if your wings would ever grow after the clipping to which we've submitted them. Now, put something on, and I'll carry you down on the beach."

"Tell me about the New Camp, and what you did to-day!" Peachy asked, after an interval in which she visibly struggled for control.

"Oh, Lord, ask anything but that," Addington exclaimed with a sudden gust of his old irritability. "I work hard enough all day. When I get home, I want to talk about something else. It rests me not to think of it."

"But, Ralph," Peachy entreated, "I could help you. I know I could. I have so many ideas about things. You know Pete says I'm a real artist. It would interest me so much if you would only talk over the building plans with me."

"I don't know that I am particularly interested in Pete's opinion of your abilities," Addington rejoined coldly. "My dear little girl," he went on, palpably striving for patience and gentleness, "there's nothing you could do to help me. Women are too impractical. This is a man's work, besides. By the way, after we've had our little outing, I'll leave you with Lulu. Honey and Pete and I are going to meet at the Clubhouse to work over some plans."

"All right," Peachy said. She added, "I guess I won't go out, after all. I feel tired. I think I'll lie down for a while."

"Anything I can do for you, dear?" Addington asked tenderly as he left.

"Nothing, thank you." Peachy's voice was stony. Then suddenly she pulled herself upright on the couch. "Oh—Ralph—one minute. I want to talk to you about Angela. Her wings are growing so fast."



VII

"Where's Peachy?" Julia asked casually the next afternoon.

"I've been wondering where she was, too," Lulu answered. "I think she must have slept late this morning. I haven't seen her all day."

"Is Angela with the children now?" Julia went on.

"I suppose so," Lulu replied. She lifted herself from the couch. Shading her hands, she studied the group at the water's edge. Honey-Boy and Peterkin were digging wells in the sand. Junior making futile imitative movements, followed close at their heels. Near the group of women, Honey-Bunch crept across the mat of pine-needles, chasing an elusive sunbeam. "No, she's not there."

"Now that I think of it, Angela didn't come to play with Peterkin this morning," said Clara. "Generally she comes flying over just after breakfast."

"You don't suppose Peachy's ill," asked Chiquita, "or Angela."

"Oh, no!" Lulu answered. "Ralph would have told one of us."

"Here she comes up the trail now," Chiquita exclaimed. "Angela's with her."

"Yes—but what's the matter?" Lulu cried.

"She's all bent over and she's staggering."

"She's crying," said Clara, after a long, intent look.

"Yes," said Lulu. "She's crying hard. And look at Angela—the darling! She's trying to comfort her."

Peachy was coming slowly towards them; slowly because, although both hands were on the rail, she staggered and stumbled. At intervals, she dropped and crawled on hands and knees. At intervals, convulsions of sobbing shook her, but it was voiceless sobbing. And those silent cataclysms, taken with her blind groping progress, had a sinister quality. Lulu and Julia tottered to meet her. "What is it, oh, what is it, Peachy?" they cried.

Peachy did not reply immediately. She fought to control herself. "Go down to the beach, baby," she said firmly to Angela. "Stay there until mother calls you. Fly away!"

The little girl fluttered irresolutely. "Fly away, dear!" Peachy repeated. Angela mounted a breeze and made off, whirling, circling, dipping, and soaring, in the direction of the water. Once or twice, she paused, dropped and, bounding from earth to air, turned her frightened eyes back to her mother's face. But each time, Peachy waved her on. Angela joined Honey-Boy and Peterkin. For a moment she poised in the air; then she sank and began languidly to dig in the sand.

"I couldn't let her hear it," Peachy said. "It's about her. Ralph—." She lost control of herself for a moment; and now her sobs had voice. "I asked him last night about Angela and her flying. I don't exactly know why I did. It was something you said to me yesterday, Julia, that put it into my head. He said that when she was eighteen, he was going to cut her wings just as he cut mine."

There came clamor from her listeners. "Cut Angela's wings!" "Why?" "What for?"

Peachy shook her head. "I don't know yet why, although he tried all night, to make me understand. He said that he was going to cut them for the same reason that he cut mine. He said that it was all right for her to fly now when she was a baby and later when she was a very young girl, that it was 'girlish' and 'beautiful' and 'lovely' and 'charming' and 'fascinating' and—and—a lot of things. He said that he could not possibly let her fly when she became a woman, that then it would be 'unwomanly' and 'unlovely' and 'uncharming' and 'unfascinating.' He said that even if he were weak enough to allow it, her husband never would. I could not understand his argument. I could not. It was as if we were talking two languages. Besides, I could scarcely talk, I cried so. I've cried for hours and hours and hours."

"Sit down, Peachy," Julia advised gently. "Let us all sit down." The women sank to their couches. But they did not lounge; they continued to sit rigidly upright. "What are you going to do, Peachy?"

"I don't know. But I'll throw myself into the ocean with Angela in my arms before I'll consent to have her wings cut. Why, the things he said. Lulu, he said that Angela might marry Honey-Boy, as they were the nearest of age. He said that Honey-Boy would certainly cut her wings, that he, no more than Honey, could endure a wife who flew. He said that all earth-men were like that. Lulu, would you let your child do—do—that to my child?"

Lulu's face had changed—almost horribly. Her eyes glittered between narrowed lids. Her lips had pulled away from each other, baring her teeth. "You tell Ralph he's mistaken about my son," she ground out.

"That's what I told him," Peachy went on in a breaking voice. "But he said you wouldn't have anything to do or say about it. He said that Honey-Boy would be trained in these matters by his father, not by his mother. I said that you would fight them both. He asked me what chance you would have against your husband and your son. He—he—he always spoke as if Honey-Boy were more Honey's child than yours, and as though Angela were more his child than mine. He said that he had talked this question over with the other men when Angela's wings first began to grow. He said that they made up their minds then that her wings must be cut when she became a woman. I besought him not to do it—I begged, I entreated, I pleaded. He said that nothing I could say would change him. I said that you would all stand by me in this, and he asked me what we five could do against them. He, called us five tottering females. Oh, it grew dreadful. I shrieked at him, finally. As he left, he said, 'Remember your first day in the Clubhouse, my dear! That's my answer.'" She turned to Clara. "Clara, you are going to bear a child in the spring. It may be a girl. Would you let son of mine or any of these women clip her wings? Will you suffer Peterkin to clip Angela's wings?"

Clara's whole aspect had fired. Flame seemed burst from her gray-green eyes, sparks to shoot to from her tawny head. "I would strike him dead first."

Peachy turned to Chiquita. The color had poured into Chiquita's face until her full brown eyes glared from a purple mask. "You, too, Chiquita. You may bear girl-children. Oh, will you help me?"

"I'll help you," Chiquita said steadily. She added after a pause, "I cannot believe that they'll dare, though."

"Oh, they'll dare anything," Peachy said bitterly. Earth-men are devils. What shall we do, Julia? she asked wearily.

Julia had arisen. She stood upright. Curiously, she did not totter. And despite her shorn pinions, she seemed more than ever to tower like some Winged Victory of the air. Her face ace glowed with rage. As on that fateful day at the Clubhouse, it was as though a fire had been built in an alabaster vase. But as they looked at her, a rush of tears wiped the flame from her eyes. She sank back again on the couch. She put her hands over her face and sobbed. "At last," she said strangely. "At last! At last! At last!"

"What shall we do, Julia?" Peachy asked stonily.

"Rebel!" answered Julia.

"But how?"

"Refuse to let them cut Angela's wings."

"Oh, I would not dare open the subject with Ralph," Peachy said in a terror-stricken voice. "In the mood he's in, he'd cut her wings tonight."

"I don't mean to tell him anything about it," Julia replied. "Rebel in secret. I mean—they overcame us once by strategy. We must beat them now by superior strategy."

"You don't really mean anything secret, do you, Julia?" Lulu remonstrated. "That wouldn't be quite fair, would it?"

And curiously enough, Julia answered in the exact words that Honey had used once. "Anything's fair in love or war—and this is both. We can't be fair. We can't trust them. We trusted them once. Once is enough for me."

"But how, Julia?" Peachy asked. Her voice had now a note of querulousness in it. "How are we going to rebel?"

Julia started to speak. Then she paused. "There's something I must ask you first. Tell me, all of you, what did you do with your wings when the men cut them off?"

The rage faded out of the four faces. A strange reticence seemed to blot out expression. The reticence changed to reminiscence, to a deep sadness.

Lulu spoke first. "I thought I was going to keep my wings as long as I lived. I always thought of them as something wonderful, left over from a happier time. I put them away, done up in silk. And at first I used to look at them every day. But I was always sad afterwards—and—and gradually, I stopped doing it. Honey hates to come home and find me sad. Months went by—I only looked at them occasionally. And after a while, I did not look at them at all. Then, one day, after Honey built the fireplace for me, I saw that we needed something—to—to—to sweep the hearth with. I tried all kinds of things, but nothing was right. Then, suddenly, I remembered my wings. It had been two years since I'd looked at them. And after that long time, I found that I didn't care so much. And so—and so—one day I got them out and cut them into little brooms for the hearth. Honey never said anything about it—but I knew he knew. Somehow—." A strange expression came into the face of the unanalytic Lulu. "I always have a feeling that Honey enjoys using my wings about the hearth."

Julia hesitated. "What did you do, Chiquita?"

"Oh, I had all Lulu's feeling at first, of course. But it died as hers did. You see this fan. You have often commented on how well I've kept it all these years—I've mended it from month to month with feathers from my own wings. The color is becoming to me—and Frank likes me to carry a fan. He says that it makes him think of a country called Spain that he always wanted to visit when he was a youth."

"And you, Clara?" Julia asked gently.

"Oh, I went through," Clara replied, "just what Lulu and Chiquita did. Then, one day, I said to myself, 'What's the use of weeping over a dead thing?' I made my wings into wall-decorations. You're right about Honey, Lulu." For a moment there was a shade of conscious coquetry in Clara's voice. "I know that it gives Pete a feeling of satisfaction—I don't exactly know why (unless it's a sense of having conquered)—to see my wings tacked up on his bedroom walls."

Peachy did not wait for Julia to put the question to her. "As soon as I could move, after they freed us from the Clubhouse, I threw mine into the sea. I knew I should go mad if I kept them where I could see them every day. Just to look at them was like a sharp knife going through my heart. One night, while Ralph was asleep, I crawled out of the house on my hands and knees, dragging them after me. I crept down to the beach and threw them into the water. They did not sink—they floated. I stayed until they drifted out of sight. The moon was up. It shone on them. Oh, the glorious blue of them—and the glitter—the—the—." But Peachy could not go on.

"What did you do with yours, Julia?" Lulu asked at last.

"I kept them until last night," Julia answered.

"Among the ship's stuff was a beautiful carved chest. It was packed with linen. Billy said it was some earth-girl's wedding outfit. I took everything out of the chest and put my wings in it. Folded carefully, they just fitted. I used to brood over them every night before I went to bed. Oh, they were wonderful in the dark—as if the chest were full of white fire. Many times I've waked up in the middle of the night and gone to look at them. I don't know why, but I had to do it. After a while, it hurt me so much that I made up my mind to lock the chest forever; for I always wept. I could not help it."

Julia wept now. The tears poured down her cheeks. But she went on.

"After yesterday's talk, I thought this situation over for a long time. Then I went to the chest, took out my wings, brought them downstairs and—and—and—."

"What?" somebody whispered.

"Burned them!" Julia's deep voice swelled on the word "burned" as though she still felt the scorching agony of that moment.

For a long moment, nobody spoke.

Julia asked their question for them. "Do you want to know why I did it?" And without waiting, she answered, "Because I wanted to mark in some way the end of my desire to fly. We must stop wanting to fly, we women. We must stop wasting our energy brooding over what's past. We must stop it at once. Not only that but—for Angela's sake and for the sake of all girl-children who will be born on this island—we must learn to walk."

"Learn to walk!" Peachy repeated. "Julia, have you gone mad? We have always held out against this degradation. We must continue to do so." Again came that proud lift of her shoulders, the vibrant stir of wing-stumps. "That would lower us to a level with men."

"But are we lowering ourselves?" Julia asked. "Are they really on a lower level? Isn't the earth as good as the air?"

"It's better, Julia," Lulu said unexpectedly. "The earth's a fine place. It's warm and homelike. Things grow there. There's nothing in the air."

"There are the stars," murmured Peachy.

"Yes," said Julia with a soft tenderness, "but we never reached them."

"The air-life may not have been better or finer," Peachy continued, "but, somehow, it seemed clearer and purer. The earth's such a cluttered place. It's so full of things. You can hardly see it for the stuff that's on it. From above it seems beautiful, but near—."

"Yet, it is on the earth that we must live—and that Angela must live," Julia interpolated gently.

"But what is the use of our learning to walk?" Peachy demanded.

"To teach Angela how to walk and all the other girl-children that are coming to us."

"But I am afraid," Peachy said anxiously, "that if Angela learned to walk, she would forget how to fly."

"On the contrary," Julia declared, "she would fly better for knowing how to walk, and walk better for knowing how to fly."

"I don't see it," interposed Clara emphatically. "I don't see what we get out of walking or what Angela will get out of it. Suppose we learned to walk? The men would stop helping us along. We'd lose the appeal of helplessness."

"But what is there about what you call 'the appeal of helplessness' that makes it worth keeping?" Julia asked, smiling affectionately into Clara's eyes. "Why shouldn't we lose it?"

"Why, because," Clara exclaimed indignantly, "because—because—why, because," she ended lamely. Then, with one of her unexpected bursts of mental candor, "I'm sure I don't know why," she admitted, "except that we have always appealed to them for that reason. Then again," she took up her argument from another angle, "if we learn to walk, they won't wait on us any more. They may even stop giving us things. As it is now, they're really very generous to us."

The others smiled with varying degrees of furtiveness. Pete, as they all knew, could always placate an incensed Clara by offering her some loot of the homeward way: a bunch of flowers, a handful of nuts, beautifully colored pebbles, shells with the iridescence still wet on them. She soon tired of these toys, but she liked the excitement of the surprise.

"Generous to us!" Chiquita burst out—and this was as unexpected as Lulu's face-about. "Well, when you come to that, they're never generous to us. They make us pay for all they give us. They seem generous—but they aren't really—any more than we are."

"They are far from generous," said Peachy. "They are ungenerous. They're tyrants. They're despots. See how they took advantage of our innocence and ignorance of earth-conditions."

"I protest." A note that they had never heard from Julia made steel of the thrilling melody of her voice. "You must know that is not true!" she said in an accusing voice. "Be fair to them! Tell the truth to yourselves! If they took advantage of our innocence and ignorance, it was we who tempted them to it in the first place. As for our innocence and ignorance—you speak as, if they were beautiful or desirable. We were innocent and ignorant of earth-conditions because we were too proud to learn about them, because we always assumed that we lowered ourselves by knowing anything about them. Our mistake was that we learned to fly before we learned to walk."

"But, Julia, what are we going to do about Angela?" Peachy asked impatiently.

"I'm coming to that presently," Julia answered. "But before—I want to ask you a question. Do you remember the big cave in the northern reef—the one we used to hide in?"

"Oh, I remember," Lulu said, "perfectly."

"Did you ever tell Honey about it?" Julia turned to her directly.

"No. Why, we promised never to tell, didn't we? In case we ever needed a place of refuge—."

"Have any of you ever told about it?" Julia turned to the others. "Think carefully! This is important."

"I never have told," Peachy said wearily. "But about Angela—."

"Have you, Chiquita?" Julia interrupted with a strange insistence.

"I have never thought of it from that day to this," Chiquita answered.

"Nor I," replied Clara. "I'm not sure that I could go to it now. Could you, Julia?"

"Oh, yes," Julia answered eagerly, "I've—." She stopped abruptly. "But now I want to talk to you, and I want you to listen carefully. I am going to tell you why I think we should learn to walk. It is, in brief, for Angela's sake and for the sake of every girl-child that is born on this island. For a long time, you will think that I am talking about other things. But you must be patient. I have seen this situation coming ever since Angela's wings began to grow. I could not hurry it—but I knew it must come. Many nights I have lain awake, planning what I should say to you when the time came. The time has come—and I am going to say it. It is a long, long speech that I shall deliver; and I am going to speak very plainly. But you must not get angry—for you know how much I love you and how much I love your children.

"I'm going back to our young girlhood, to the time when our people were debating the Great Flight. We thought that we were different from them all, we five, that we were more original and able and courageous. And we were different. For when our people decided to go south to the Snowlands, the courage of rebellion grew in us and we deserted in the night. Do you remember the wonderful sense of freedom that came to us, and how the further north we flew, the stronger it became? When we found these islands, it seemed to us that they must have been created especially for us. Here, we said, we would live always, free from earth-ties—five incorruptible air-women.

"Then the men came. I won't go into all that. We've gone over it hundreds and hundreds of times, just as we did this afternoon, playing the most pathetic game we know—the do-you-remember game. But after they came, we found that we were not free from earth-ties. For the Great Doom overtook us and we fell in love. Then came the capture. And we lost our wings."

She paused a moment.

"Do you remember that awful day at the Clubhouse, how Chiquita, comforted us? I—I failed you then; I fainted; I felt myself to blame for your betrayal. But Chiquita kept saying, 'Don't be afraid. They won't hurt us. We are precious to them. They would rather die than lose us. They need us more than we need them. They are bound to us by a chain that they cannot break.' And for a long time that seemed true. What we had to learn was that we needed them just as much as they needed us, that we were bound to them by a chain that we could not break.

"I often think"—Julia's voice had become dreamy—"now when it is so different, of those first few months after the capture. How kind they were to us, how gentle, how considerate, how delicate, how chivalrous! Do you remember that they treated us as if we were children, how, for a long time, they pretended to believe in fairies? Do you remember the long fairy-hunts in the moonlit jungle, the long mermaid-hunts in the moonlit ocean? Do you remember the fairy-tales by the fire? It seemed to me then that life was one long fairy-tale. And how quickly we learned their language! Has it ever occurred to you that no one of them has ever bothered to learn ours—none except Frank, and he only because he was mentally curious? Then came the long wooing. How we argued the marriage question—discussed and debated—each knowing that the Great Doom was on her and could not be gain-said.

"Then came the betrothal, the marriages, and suddenly all that wonderful starlight and firelight life ended. For a while, the men seemed to drift away from each other. For a while, we—the 'devoted five,' as our people called us—seemed to drift away from each other. It was as though they took back something they had freely given each other to give to us. It was as though we took back something we had freely given each other to give to them.

"Then, just as suddenly, they began to drift away from us and back to each other. Some of the high, worshiping quality in their attitude toward us disappeared. It was as though we had become less beautiful, less interesting, less desirable—as if possession had killed some precious, perishable quality."

"What that quality is I do not know. We are not dumb like stones or plants, we women. We are not dull like birds or beasts. We do not fade in a day like flowers. We do not stop like music. We do not go out like light. What it was that went, or when or how, I do not know. But it was something that thrilled and enchanted them. It went—and it went forever."

"It was as though we were toys—new toys—with a secret spring. And if one found and pressed that spring, something unexpected and something unbelievably wonderful would happen. They hunted for that spring untiringly—hunted—and hunted—and hunted. At last they found it. And after they found it, we no longer interested them. The mystery and fascination had gone. After all, a toy is only a toy."

"Then came our great trouble—that terrible time of the illicit hunting. Every man of them making love to some one of you. Every woman of you making love to some one of them. That was a year of despair for me. I could see no way out. It seemed to me that you were all drifting to destruction and that I could not stay you. And then I began to realize that the root of evil was only one thing idleness. Idle men! Idle women! And as I wondered what we should do next, Nature took the matter in her hands. She gave all you women work to do."

Julia paused. Her still gray eyes fixed on faraway things.

"Honey-Boy was born, then Peterkin, then Angela, then Honey-Bunch. And suddenly everything was right again. But, somehow, the men seemed soon to exhaust the mystery and fascination of fatherhood just as they had exhausted the mystery and fascination of husbandhood. They became restless and irritable. It seemed to me that another danger beset us—vague, monstrous, looming—but I did not know what. You see they have the souls of discoverers and explorers and conquerors, these earth-men. They are creators. Their souls are filled with an eternal unrest. Always they must attempt one thing more; ever they seek something beyond. They would stop the sun and the moon in their courses; they would harness the hurricane; they would chain the everlasting stars. Sea, earth, sky are but their playgrounds; past, present, future their servants; they lust to conquer the unexplored areas of space and time. It came to me that what they needed was work of another kind. One night, when I was lying awake thinking it over, the idea of the New Camp burst on my mind. Do you remember how delighted they were when I suggested it to them, how delighted you were, how gay and jubilant we all were, how, for days and days, we talked of nothing else? And we were as happy over the idea as they. For a long time, we thought that we were going to help.

"We thought that we were going with them every day, not to work but to sit in the nearby shade, to encourage them with our praise and appreciation. And we did go for a month. But they had to carry us all the way—or nearly carry us. Think of that—supporting a full-grown woman all that weary road. I saw the feeling begin to grow in them that we were burdens. I watched it develop. Understand me, a beautiful burden, a beloved burden, but still a burden, a burden that it would be good to slip off the back for the hours of the working day. I could not blame them. For we were burdens. Then, under one pretext or another, they began to suggest to us not to go daily to the New Camp with them. The sun was too hot; we might fall; insects would sting us; the sudden showers were too violent. Finally, that if we did not watch the New Camp grow, it would be a glorious surprise to us when it was finished.

"At first, you were all touched and delighted with their gallantry—but I—I knew what it meant."

"I tried to stem the torrent of their strange, absorption, but I could not. It grew and grew. And now you see what has happened. It has been months since one of us has been to the New Camp and all of you, except Peachy and myself, have entirely lost interest in it. It is not surprising. It is natural. I, too, would lose interest if I did not force myself to talk with Billy about it every night of my life. Lulu said yesterday that it seemed strange to her that, after working together all day, they should want to get together in the Clubhouse at night. For a long time that seemed strange to me—until I discovered that there is a chain binding them to each other even as there is a chain binding them to us. And the Bond of Work is stronger than the Bond of Sex because Work is a living, growing thing."

"In the meantime, we have our work too—the five children. But it is a little constructive work—not a great one. For in this beautiful, safe island, there is not much that we can do besides feed them. And so, here we sit day after day, five women who could once fly, big, strong, full-bodied, teeming with various efficiencies and abilities—wasted. If we had kept our wings, we could have been of incalculable assistance to them. Or if we could walk—."

"But I won't go further into our situation. I want to consider Angela's."

"You are wondering what all this has to do with the matter of Angela's flying. And now I am going to tell you. Don't you see if they wait until she is a woman before they cut her wings, she will be in the same case that we are in, unable either to fly or to walk. Rather would I myself cut her wings to-night and force her to walk. But on the other hand, should she grow to womanhood with wings, she would be no true mate to a wingless man unless she could also walk. No, we must see to it that she both flies and walks. In that case, she will be a perfect mate to the wingless man. Her strength will not be as great as his—but her facility will be greater. She will walk well enough to keep by his side; and her flying will supplement his powers."

"And then—oh, don't you see it—don't you see why we must fight—fight—fight for Angela, don't you see why her wings are a sacred trust with us? Sometime, there will be born here——Clara," she turned her look on Clara's excited face, "it may be the baby that's coming to you in the spring—sometime there will be born here a boy with wings. Then more and more often they will come until there are as many winged men as winged women. What will become of our girl-children then if their mates fly as well as walk away from them. There is only one way out. And there is only one duty before us—to learn to walk that we may teach our daughters to walk—to preserve our daughter's wings that they may teach their sons to fly."

"But, Julia," Peachy exclaimed, after an instant of dead silence. There was a stir of wonder, flutelike in her voice, a ripple of wonder, flamelike on her face. "Our feet are too fine, too soft. Ralph says that mine are only toy feet, that no creature could really get along on them."

She kicked the loose sandals off. Tiny, slim, delicately chiseled, her feet were of a china whiteness, except where, at the tips, the toes showed a rose-flush or where, over the instep, the veins meandered in a blue network.

"Of course Peachy's feet are smaller than mine," Lulu said wistfully. "But even my workaday little pads wouldn't carry me many steps." From under her skirts appeared a pair of capable-looking, brown feet, square, broad but little and satin-smooth.

"Mine are quite useless," Chiquita sighed. "Oh, why did I let myself grow so big?" There was a note of despair in her velvet voice. "It's almost as if there were no muscles in them." She pulled aside her scarlet draperies. In spite of her increasing size, her dusky feet had kept their aristocratic Andalusian lines.

"And I've always done just the things that would make it impossible for me to walk," said Clara in a discouraged tone. "I've always taken as much care of my feet as my hands—they're like glass." This was true. In the pale-gold of her skin, the pink nails glittered brilliantly.

"And think of your own feet, Julia," Lulu exclaimed. "They're like alabaster. Pete says that from the artist's point of view, they're absolutely perfect. You don't imagine for an instant that you could take a step on them, unsupported?"

"No?" said Julia. "No?" With a swift leap of her body, she stood on the feet in question. And as the other stared, stupefied, she walked with the splendid, swinging gait of an Amazon once, twice, thrice around the Playground.

"Come, Angela!" Peachy called. "Come, baby!"

Angela started to spread her pinions. "Don't fly, baby," Peachy called. "Walk!"

Obediently, Angela dropped her wings, sank. Her feet, shell-like, pinky-soft, padded the ground. She tried to balance, but she swayed and fell.

"No matter, darling!" Peachy called cheerily, "Try again!"

Angela heroically pulled herself up. She made a few uncertain steps, but she stumbled with every move.

Honey-Boy and Peterkin came running up to her side; Junior, grinning happily, waddled behind a long way in the rear. "Angela's trying to walk!" the boys cried. "Angela's trying to walk!" They capered with amusement. "Oh, isn't she funny? Look at the girl trying to walk!"

The tears spurted from Angela's eyes. Her lips quivered. Her wings shot up straight.

"Don't mind what the boys say, Angela!" Peachy called. "Put your wings down! Keep right on walking!"

Again Angela's pinions dropped. Again she took a few steps. This time she fell to her knees. But she pulled herself up, sped onward, fell again, and again. She had reached the stones that bounded the sand. When she arose this last time, her foot was, bleeding.

"Keep on walking, baby!" Peachy commanded inflexibly. But there was a rain of tears on her check.

Angela staggered forward a rod or two; and now both feet left a trail of blood. Then suddenly again she struggled for balance, fell headlong.

"Keep on walking, mother's heart's treasure," Peachy commanded. She dropped to her knees and held out her arms; her face worked uncontrollably.

Angela pulled herself up with a determined settling of her little rose-petal mouth. Swaying, stumbling, staggering, she ran on in one final spurt until she collapsed in her mother's arms.



VIII

"And as soon as we finish the New Camp," Honey said eagerly, "we must make another on the rocks at the north. That will be our summer place."

"And as soon as we've finished that, let's build a house-boat for the lake," Billy suggested.

"Then let's put up some hunting-boxes at the south," Ralph took it up.

"There's a good year's work on the New Camp," Frank reminded them.

"But after the New Camp and the Hunting-Boxes and the House-Boat—what?" Ralph asked a little drearily.

"Plenty to do," Billy promised cheerily. "I've been working on a plan to lay out the entire island in camps and parks. Pete, I want to bring them over to you some night."

"Come to-night," Pete said eagerly.

"Why not bring them to the Clubhouse," Honey asked. "I'd like to see them, too. While I'm working with my hands on one job, I like to be working with my head on the next."

"Sure," agreed Ralph, "I'm for that. I'll join you to-night. Can you come, Frank?"

"I had meant to write to-night," Frank said. "But of course I can put that off."

"Has it ever occurred to you fellows," Billy asked, "that just as soon as the boys are big enough for us to leave the women in their care, we can build a boat and visit the other four islands?"

"Gee!" Honey said. "Now you're shouting. I never thought of that. Lord, how I would like to get away from this place for a while. Being shut in in any way always gets on my nerves."

Ralph drew a long breath. "I never thought of it," he admitted. "But it gives me a new lease of life."

"I shall feel like Columbus," Pete acknowledged, "and then some. Why it's like visiting the moon—or Mars. And God knows we'll need an other island or two in our business—provided we stay here for two or three generations more. We'll be a densely populated world-center before we know it."

"I was thinking," Billy suddenly relapsed to the previous subject. "How about the women tonight? They always hate to have us leave them when we've been away all day,—and we've been here two days, remember."

"Oh, that's all right," Honey answered. "I'm sure Lulu'll be all right. There's been the greatest change in her in the last few months."

"Peachy won't mind," said Ralph. "She told me the other night to go to the Clubhouse as often as I wanted and stay as late."

"Clara says practically the same." Pete wrinkled his forehead in perplexity. "It took my breath away. How do you account for it?"

"Oh, that's all right," Honey answered, stopping to dash the sweat from his forehead, "I should say it was just a matter of their getting over their foolishness. I suppose all young married women have it—that instinct to monopolize their husbands. And when you think it over, we do sort of give them the impression while we're courting them that they are the whole cheese. But that isn't all. They've come to their senses on some other matters. I think, for instance, they're beginning to get our point of view on this flying proposition. Lulu hasn't hinted that she'd like to fly for three months. She's never been so contented since, we captured them. To do her justice, though, she always saw, when I pointed it out to her, that flying was foolish, besides being dangerous."

"Well," Ralph said, "what between holding them down from the clouds and keeping them away from the New Camp, managing them has been some job. But I guess you're right, Honey. I think they're reconciled now to their lot. If I do say it as shouldn't, Peachy seems like a regular woman nowadays. She's braced up in fine style in the last two months. Her color is much better; her spirits are high. When I get home at night, she doesn't want to go out at all. If I say that I'm going to the Clubhouse, she never raises a yip. In fact, she seems too tired to care. She's always ready now to turn in when I do. For months and months, you know, she sat up reading until all hours of the night and morning. But now she falls asleep like a child."

"Then she's gotten over that insomnia?" Pete asked this casually and he did not look at Ralph.

"Entirely," Ralph replied briefly, and in his turn he did not look at Pete. "She's a perfectly healthy woman now. She gets her three squares every day and her twelve hours every night—regular. I never saw such an improvement in a woman."

"Well, when it comes to sleeping," Pete said, "I don't believe she's got anything on Clara. I often find her dead to the world when I get home at night. I jolly her about that—for she has always thought going to bed early indicated lack of temperament. And as for teasing to be allowed to fly, or to be taken out swimming, or to call on any of you, or to let her tag me here—why, that's all stopped short. She keeps dozing off all the evening. Sometimes in the midst of a sentence, she'll begin to nod. Never saw her looking so well, though."

"Chiquita, on the contrary, isn't sleeping as much as she did," Frank said. "She's more active, though—physically, I mean. She's rejoicing at present over the fact that she's lost twenty-five, pounds in the last three months. She said last night that she hadn't been so slim since she was a girl."

"Twenty-five pounds!" exclaimed Honey. "That's a good deal to lose. How the hell—how do you explain it!"

"Increased household activity," Frank replied vaguely. "And then mentally, I think she's more vigorous. She's been reading a great deal by herself. Formerly I found that reading annoyed her—even when I read aloud, explaining carefully as I went along."

"I haven't noticed an increased activity on Julia's part," Billy said thoughtfully. "But she's always been extraordinarily active, considering everything. The way she gets about is marvelous. But of course she's planned the placing of her furniture with that in view. She's as quick as a cat. I have noticed, however, that she seems much happier. They certainly are a changed lot of women."

"The twelve o'clock whistle has just blown," Honey announced. "Let's eat."

The five men dropped their tools. They gathered their lunches together and fell to a voracious feeding. At last, pipes appeared. They stretched themselves to the smoker's ease. For a while, the silence was unbroken. Then, here and there, somebody dropped an irrelevant remark. Nobody answered it.

They lay in one corner of the big space which had been cleared from the jungle chaos. On one side rippled the blue lake carving into many tiny bays and inlets and padded with great green oases of matted lily-leaves. On the other side rose the highest hill on the island. The cleared land stretched to the very summit of this hill. Over it lay another chaos, the chaos of confusion; half-completed buildings of log and stone, rectangles and squares of dug-up land where buildings would some day stand, half-finished roadways, ditches of muddy water, hills of round beach-stones, piles of logs, some stripped of the bark, others still trailing a green huddle of leaf and branch, tools everywhere. The jungle rolled like, a tidal wave to the very boundary; in places its green spume had fallen over the border. As the men smoked, their eyes went back to the New Camp again and again. It was obvious that constantly they made mental measurements, that ever in their mind's eye they saw the completed thing.

"Well," said Ralph, reverting without warning to the subject under discussion. His manner tacitly assumed that the others had also been considering it mentally. "I confess I don't understand women really. I've always thought that I did. But I see now that I never have." Addington's rare outbursts of frankness in regard to the other sex were the more startling because they contrasted so sharply with his normal attitude of lordly understanding and contempt. "I've been a good manager and I'm not saying that I haven't had my successes with them. But as I look back upon them now, I realize I followed my intuitions, not my reason. I've done what I've done without knowing why. I have to feel my way still. I can't account for the change that's come over them. For four years now they've been at us to let their wings grow again. And for four years we've been saying no in every possible tone of voice and with every possible inflection. I've had no idea that Peachy would ever get over it. My God, you fellows have no idea what I've been through with her in regard to this question of flying. Why, one night three months ago, she had an awful attack of hysteria because I told her I'd have to cut Angela's wings as soon as she was grown-up."

"Well, what did she expect?" Honey asked.

"That I'd let her keep them—that I'd let her fly the way Peachy did! Or—what do you suppose she suggested?—that I cut them off now."

"Well, what was her idea in that?" Billy's tone was the acme of perplexity.

"That as long as I wouldn't let her keep them after she had attained her growth, she might as well not have them at all."

Billy laughed. "That's a woman's reasoning all right, all right. Why, it would destroy half Angela's charm in my eyes. That little fluttering flight of hers, half on the ground, half in the air, is so lovely, so engaging, so endearing——. But of course letting her fly high would be—."

"Absurd," Ralph interrupted.

"Dangerous," Honey interpolated.

"Unwomanly," Pete added.

"Immodest," Billy concluded.

"Well, thank God it's all over," Ralph went on. "But, as I say, I give up guessing what's changed her, unless it's the principle that constant dropping wears away the stone. Oscar Wilde had the answer. They're sphinxes without secrets. They do anything that occurs to them and for no particular reason. I get along with, them only by laying down the law and holding them to it. And I reckon they've got that idea firmly fixed in their minds now—that they're to stay where we put them."

Honey wriggled as if in discomfort. "Seems to me, Ralph, you take a pretty cold-blooded view of the situation. I guess I don't go very far with you. Not that I pretend to understand women. I don't. My system with them is to give them anything they ask, within reason, of course, to keep them busy and happy, buy them presents, soft-soap them, jolly them along. I suppose that personally, I wouldn't have minded their flying a little every afternoon, as long as they took the proper care. I mean by that, not to fly too far out to sea or too high in the air and never when we were at home, so long, in short, as they followed the rules that we laid down for them. You fellows seem to have the idea if we let them do that we'd lose them. But if there's one general proposition fixed more firmly in my nut than any other, it is that you can't lose them. But of course I intend always to stand by whatever you-all say."

"I don't know," Billy burst in hotly, "which of you two makes me sickest and which is the most insulting in his attitude towards women, you, Ralph, who treat them as if they were household pets, or you, Honey, who treat them as if they were dolls. In my opinion there is only one law to govern a man's relation with a woman—the law of chivalry. To love her, and cherish her, to do all the hard work of the world for her, to stand between her and everything that is unbeautiful and unpleasant, to think for her, to put her on a pedestal and worship her; to my mind that sums up the whole duty of man to woman."

"They're better than goddesses on pedestals," Pete said. "They're creatures neither of flesh nor of marble—they're ideals. They're made of stars, sunlight, moonshine. I believe in treating them like beings of a higher world."

"I disagree with all of you," Frank said ponderously, "I don't believe in treating them as if they were pets or dolls, or goddesses on pedestals or ideals. I believe in treating them like human beings, the other half of the race. I don't see that they are any better or any worse than we—they're about the same. Soon after we captured them, you remember, we entered into an agreement that no one of us would ever let his wife's wings grow without the consent of all the others. One minute after I had given my word, I was sorry for it. But you kept your word to me in the agreement that I forced on you before the capture; and, so, I shall always keep mine to you. But I regret it more and more as time goes on. You see I'm so constituted that I can't see anything but abstract justice. And according to abstract justice we have no right to hold these women bound to the earth. If the air is their natural habitat, it is criminal for us to keep them out of it. They're our equals in every sense—I mean in that they supplement us, as we supplement them. They've got what we haven't got and we've got what they haven't got. They can't walk, but they can fly. We can't fly, but we can walk. It is as though they compelled us, creatures of the earth, to live in the air all the time. Oh, it's wrong. You'll see it some day."

"I never listened to such sophistry in my life," said Ralph in disgust. "You'll be telling us next," he added sarcastically, "that we hadn't any right to capture them."

"We hadn't," Frank replied promptly. "On reflection, I consider that the second greatest crime of my existence. But that's done and can't be wiped out. They own this island just as much as we do. They'd been coming to it for months before we saw it. They ought to have every kind of right and freedom and privilege on it that we, have."

"I'd like to hear," Addington said in the high, thin tone of his peevish disgust, "the evidence that justifies you in saying that. What have they ever done on this island to put them on an equality with us? Aren't they our inferiors from every point of view, especially physically?"

"Certainly they are," agreed Honey, not peevishly but as one who indorses, unnecessarily, a self-evident fact. "They've lived here on Angel Island as long as we have. But they haven't made good yet, and we have. Why, just imagine them working on the New Camp—playing tennis, even."

"But we prevented all that," Frank protested. "We cut their wings. Handicapped as they were by their small feet, they could do nothing."

"But," Honey ejaculated, "if they'd been our physical equals, they would never have let us cut their wings."

"But we caught them with a trick," Frank said, "we put them in a position in which they could not use their physical strength."

"Well, if they'd been our mental equals, they'd never let themselves get caught like that."

"Well—but—but—but—" Frank sputtered. "Now you're arguing crazily. You're going round in a circle."

"Oh, well," Honey exclaimed impatiently, "let's not argue any more. You always go round in a circle. I hate argument. It never changes, anybody. You never hear what the other fellow says. You always come out of it with your convictions strengthened."

Frank made a gesture of despair. He drew a little book from his pocket and began to read.

"There's one thing about them that certainly is to laugh," Honey said after a silence, a glint of amusement in his big eyes, "and that is the care they take of those useless feet of theirs. Lulu's even taken to doing hers up every night in oil or cream. It's their particular vanity. Now, take that, for instance. Men never have those petty vanities. I mean real men—regular fellows."

"How about the western cowboy and his fancy boots?" Frank shot back over his book.

"Oh, that's different," Ralph said. "Honey's right. That business of taking care of their feet symbolizes the whole sex to me. They do the things they do just because the others do them—like sheep jumping over a wall. Their fad at present is pedicure. Peachy's at it just like the rest of them. Every night when I come home, I find her sitting down with both feet done up in one of those beautiful scarfs she's collected, resting on a cushion. It's rather amusing, though." Ralph struggled to suppress his smile of appreciation.

"Clara's the same." Pete smiled too. "She's cut herself out some high sandals from a pair of my old boots. And she wears them day and night. She says she's been careless lately about getting her feet sunburned. And she's not going to let me see them until they're perfectly white and transparent again. She says that small, beautiful, and useless feet were one of the points of beauty with her people."

"Julia's got the bug, too." Billy's eyes lighted with a gleam of tenderness. "Among the things she found in the trunk was a box of white silk stockings and some moccasins. She's taken to wearing them lately. It always puts a crimp in me to get a glimpse of them—as if she'd suddenly become a normal, civilized woman."

"Now that I think of it," Frank again came out of his book. "Chiquita asked me a little while ago for a pair of shoes. She's wearing them all the time now to protect her feet—from the sun she says."

"It is the most curious thing," Billy said, "that they have never wanted to walk. Not that I want them to now," he added hastily. "That's their greatest charm in my eyes—their helplessness. It has a curious appeal. But it is singular that they never even tried it, if only out of curiosity."

"They have great contempt for walking," Honey observed. "And it has never occurred to them, apparently, that they could enjoy themselves so much more if they could only get about freely. Not that I want them to—any more than you. That utter helplessness is, as you say, appealing."

"Oh, well," Ralph said contemptuously, "what can you expect of them? I tell you it's lack of gray matter. They don't cerebrate. They don't co-ordinate. They don't correlate. They have no initiative, no creative faculty, no mental curiosity or reflexes or reactions. They're nothing but an unrelated bunch of instincts, intuitions, and impulses—human nonsense machines! Why if the positions were reversed and we'd lost our wings, we'd have been trying to walk the first day. We'd have been walking better than they by the end of a month."

"I like it just as it is," Pete said contentedly. "They can't fly and they don't want to walk. We always know where to find them."

"Thank God we don't have to consider that matter," Billy concluded. "Apparently the walking impulse isn't in them. They might some time, by hook or crook, wheedle us into letting them fly a little. But one thing is certain, they'll never take a step on those useless feet."

"Delicate, adorable, useless little feet of theirs," Pete said softly as if he were reciting from an ode.

"There's something moving along the trail, boys," Frank said quietly. "I keep getting glimpses of it through the bushes—white—blue—red and yellow."

The others stopped, petrified. They scowled, bending an intent gaze through the brilliant noon sunshine.

"Sure I get it!" Billy answered in a low tone. "There's something there."

"I don't." Honey shaded his eyes.

"Nor I." Pete squinted.

"Well, I don't see anything," Ralph said impatiently. "But providing you fellows aren't nuts, what the devil can it be?"

"It's—" Billy began. Then, "My God!" he ended.

Something white glimmered at the end of the trail. It grew larger, bulked definitely, filled the opening.

"Julia!" Billy gasped.

"And she's—she's—." Honey could not seem to go on.

"Walking," Billy concluded for him.

"And Peachy!" Ralph exclaimed.

"And why—and—and——." It was Pete who stopped for breath this time.

"And she's walking!" Ralph concluded for himself.

"And Clara! And Lulu! And Chiquita!" they greeted each one of the women as fast as they appeared. And in between them came again and again their astonished "And walking!"

The five women were walking, and walking with no appearance of effort, swiftly, lightly, joyously. Julia, at the head, moved with the frank, free, swinging gait of an Amazon. Peachy seemed to flit along the ground; there was in her progress something of the dipping, curving grace of her flight. Clara glided; her effect of motionless movement was almost obsidian. Chiquita kept the slow, languid gait, both swaying and pulsating, of a Spanish woman. Lulu trotted with the brisk, pleasing activity of a Morgan pony.

Their skirts had been shortened; they rippled away from slim ankles. The swathing, wing-like draperies had disappeared; their slit sleeves fluttered away from bare shoulders. The women did not pause. They came on steadily, their eyes fixed on the group of men.

The faces in that group had changed in expression. Ralph's became black and lowering. Honey looked surprised but interested; his color did not vary; Billy turned a deep brick-red. Pete went white. Frank Merrill alone studied the phenomenon with the cool, critical eye of scientific observation.

The women paused at a little distance where the path dipped to coil around a little knoll. They abandoned the path to climb this knoll; they climbed it with surprising ease; they almost flew up the sides. They stood there silently grouped about Julia. For an instant the two parties gazed at each other.

Then, "What does this mean, Peachy?" Ralph asked sternly.

Julia answered for Peachy.

"It means—rebellion," she said. "It means that we have decided among ourselves that we will not permit you to cut Angela's wings. It means that rather than have you do that, we will leave you, taking our children with us. If you will promise us that you will not cut Angela's wings nor the wings of any child born to us, we in our turn will promise to return to our homes and take our lives up with you just where we left off."

A confused murmur arose from the men. Ralph leaped to his feet. He made a movement in the direction of the women, involuntary but violent.

The women shrank closer to Julia. They turned white, but they waited. Julia did not stir.

"Go home, you—" Ralph stopped abruptly and choked something back.

"Go at once!" Billy added sternly.

"I'm ashamed of you, Clara," Pete said.

"Better go back, girls," Honey advised. He tried to make his tone authoritative. But in spite of himself, there lingered a little pleading in it. To make up, he unmasked the full battery of his coaxing smile, his quizzical frown, his snapping dimples. "We can't let Angela fly after she's grown up. It isn't natural. It isn't what a woman should be doing."

Frank said nothing.

Julia looked at them steadily an instant.

"Come!" she said briefly to her little band. The women ran down the knoll and disappeared up the trail.

"Well, I'll be damned," Ralph remarked.

"Well, when you come to that, I'll be damned," Honey coincided.

"Who was it said that God did not intend them to walk?" Frank asked slyly.

"So that's what all this bandaging of feet meant," Billy went on, ignoring this thrust. "They were learning to walk all the time."

"You're on," Ralph said in a disgusted tone. "Foxy little devils!"

"Gee, it must have hurt!" Honey exclaimed. "They must have been torn to ribbons at first. Some pluck, believe me!"

"I bet you dollars to doughnuts, Julia's at the bottom of it," remarked Pete.

"No question about that," Frank commented. "Julia thinks."

"Considerable bean, too," said Honey. "Well, we've got to put a stop to it to-night."

"Sure!" Ralph agreed. "Read the riot act the instant we get home. By the Lord Harry, if it's necessary I'll tie my wife up!"

"I never could do that," said Pete.

"Nor I," said Frank.

"Nor I," said Honey. "But I don't think we'll have to resort to violent measures. We've only got to appeal to their love; I can twist Lulu right round my finger that way."

"I guess you're right," Ralph smiled. "That always fetches them."

"I don't anticipate any real trouble from this," Billy went on as though arguing with himself. "We've got to take it at the start, though. We can't have Angela flying after she's grown."

"Sure," said Honey, "it'll blow over in a few days. But now that they can walk, let's offer to teach them how to dance and play tennis and bocci and golf. And I'll tell you what—we'll lay out some gardens for them—make them think they're beautifying the place. We might even teach them how to put up shelves and a few little carpentering tricks like that. That'll hold them for a while. Oh, you'll all come round to my tactics sooner or later! Pay them compliments! Give them presents! Jolly them along! And say, it will be fun to have some mixed doubles. Gee, though, they'll be something fierce now they've learned how to walk. They'll be here half the time. They'll have so many ideas how the New Camp ought to be built and a woman is such an obstinate cuss. Asking questions and arguing and interfering—they delay things so. We've got to find out something harmless that'll keep them busy."

"Oh, we never can have them here—never in the world," Ralph agreed. "But we'll fix them to-night. How about it, old top?" he inquired jovially of Frank.

Frank did not answer.

In point of fact they did not "fix" the women that night, owing to the simple reason that they found the camp deserted—not a sign of woman or child in sight or hearing.

"Well, there's one thing about it," Ralph said on their way back to the New Camp the next morning, "you can always beat any woman's game by just ignoring it. They can stand anything but not being noticed. Now our play is to do nothing and say nothing. They're on this island somewhere. They can't walk off it, and they can't swim off it, and they can't fly off it. They may stay away for day or more or possibly two. By the end of week they'll certainly be starved out. And they'll be longing for our society. We want to keep right at work as if nothing had happened. Let them go and come as they please. But we take no notice—see! We've done that once before and we can do it again. When they come home, they'll be a pretty tired-out, hungry, discouraged gang of girls. I bet we never hear another word out of them on this subject."

The men worked as usual the whole morning; but they talked less. They were visibly preoccupied. At every pause, they glanced furtively up the trail. When noon came, it was evident that they dropped their tools with relief. They sat with their eyes glued to the path.

"Here they come!" Billy exclaimed at last.

The men did not speak; nor until they came to the little knoll that debouched from the trail did the women. Again Julia acted as spokesman. "We have given you a night to think this matter over," she said briefly. "What is your decision? Shall Angela's wings go uncut?"

"No, by God!" burst out Ralph. "No daughter of mine is going to fly. If you—."

But with a silencing gesture, Billy interposed. "Aren't you women happy?" he asked.

"Oh, no," Julia answered. "Of course we're not. I mean we have one kind of happiness—the happiness that come's from being loved and having a home and children. But there is another kind of happiness of which when you cut our wings we were no longer capable—the happiness that comes from a sense of absolute freedom. We can bear that for ourselves, but not for our daughters. Angela and all the girl-children who follow her must have the freedom that we have lost. Will you give it to them?"

"No!" Ralph yelled. And "Go home!" Honey said brutally.

The women turned.

A dead tree grew by the knoll, one slender limb stretching across its top to the lake. Peachy ran nimbly along this limb until she came as near to the tip as her weight would permit. She stood there an instant balancing herself; then she walked swiftly back and forth. Finally she jumped to the ground, landing squarely on her feet. She ran like a deer to join the file of women.

Involuntarily the men applauded.

"Remember the time when they first came to the island," Ralph said, "how she was proud like a lion because she managed to hold herself for an instant on a tree-branch? Her wings were helping her then. Now it's a real balancing act. Some stunt that! By Jove, she must have been practising tightrope walking." In spite of his scowl, a certain tenderness, half of past admiration, half of present pride, gleamed in his eyes.

"You betchu they have. They've been practising running and jumping and leaping and vaulting and God only knows what else. Well, we've only got to keep this up two or three days longer and they'll come back." Honey spoke in a tone which palpably he tried to make jaunty. In spite of himself, there was a wavering note of uncertainty in it.

"Oh, we'll get them yet!" Ralph said. "How about it, old fellow?" Ralph had never lost his old habit of turning to Frank in psychological distress.

But Frank again kept silence.

"Betchu we find them at home to-night," Honey said as they started down the trail an hour ahead of time. "Who'll take me. Come!"

No one took him, luckily for Honey. There was no sign of life that night, nor the next, nor the next. And in the meantime, the women did not manifest themselves once during the daytime at the New Camp.

"God, we've got to do something about this," Ralph said at the end of five days. "This is getting serious. I want to see Angela. I hadn't any idea I could miss her so much. It seems as if they'd been gone for a month. They must have been preparing for this siege for weeks. Where the thunder are they hiding—in the jungle somewhere, of course?"

"Oh, of course," Honey assented. "I miss the boys, too," he mourned, "I used to have a frolic with them every morning before I left and every night when I got home."

"And it's all so uncomfortable living alone," Ralph grumbled. He was unshaven. The others showed in various aspects of untidiness the lack of female standards.

"I'm so sick of my own cooking," Honey complained.

"Not so sick as we are," said Pete.

"Anybody can have my job that wants it," Honey volunteered with a touch of surliness unusual with him.

At noon the five women appeared again at the end of the trail.

In contrast to the tired faces and dishevelled figures of the men, they presented an exquisite feminine freshness, hair beautifully coiled, garments spotless and unwrinkled. But although their eyes were like stars and their cheeks like flowers, their faces were serious; a dew, as of tears lately shed, lay over them.

"Shall Angela fly?"' Julia asked without parley.

The women turned.

"Wait a moment," Frank called in a sudden tone of authority. "I'm with you women in this. If you'll let me join your forces, I'll fight on your side."

He had half-covered the distance between them before Julia stopped him with a "Wait a moment!" as decisive as his own.

"In the first place," she said, "we don't want your help. If we don't get this by our own efforts, we'll never value it. In the second place, we'll never be sure of it. We don't trust you—quite. You tricked us once. That was your fault. If you trick us again, that's our fault. Thank you—but no, Frank."

The women disappeared down the trail while still the men stood staring.

"Well, can you beat it?" was the only comment for a moment—and that came from Pete. In another instant, they had turned on Merrill, were upbraiding him hotly for what they called his treason.

"You can't bully me," was his unvarying answer. "Remember, any time they call on me, I'll fight for them."

"Well, you can do what you want with your own wife, of course," Ralph said, falling into one of his black rages. "But I'm damned if you'll encourage mine."

"Boys," he added later, after a day of steadily increasing rage, "I'm tired of this funny business. Let's knock off work to-morrow and hunt them. What gets me is their simplicity. They don't seem to have calculated on our superior strength. It won't take us more than a few hours to run them to earth. By God, I wish we had a pair of bloodhounds."

"All right," said Billy. "I'm with you, Ralph. I'm tired of this."

"Let's go, to bed early to-night," said Pete, "and start at sunrise."

"Well," said Honey philosophically, "I've hunted deer, bear, panther, buffalo, Rocky Mountain sheep, jaguar, lion, tiger, and rhinoceros—but this is the first time I ever hunted women."

They started at sunrise—all except Frank, who refused to have anything to do with the expedition—and they hunted all day. At sunset they camped where they fell exhausted. They went back to the search the next day and the next and the next and the next.

And nowhere did they find traces of their prey.

"Where are they?" Ralph said again and again in a baffled tone. "They couldn't have flown away, could they?"

And, as often as he asked this question, his companions answered it in the varying tones of their fatigue and their despair. "Of course they couldn't—their wings were too short."

"Still," Frank said once. "It's now long past the half-yearly shearing period." He added in another instant, "I don't think, though, that their wings could more than lift them."

"Well, it's evident, wherever they are, they won't budge until we go back to work," Billy said at the end of a week. "This is useless and hopeless."

The next day they returned to the New Camp.

"Here they come," Billy called joyously that noon. "Thank God!" he added under his breath.

Again the five women appeared at the beginning of the trail. Their faces were white now, hollow and lined; but as ever, they bore a look of extraordinary pristineness. And this time they brought the children. Angela lay in her mother's arms like a wilted flower. Her wings sagged forlornly and her feet were bandaged. But stars of a brilliant blue flared and died and flared again in her eyes; roses of a living flame bloomed and faded and bloomed again in her cheek. Her look went straight to her father's face, clung there in luminous entreaty. Peterkin, more than ever like a stray from some unreal, pixy world, surveyed the scene with his big, wondering, gray-green eyes. Honey-Boy, having apparently just waked, stared, owl-like, his brows pursed in comic reproduction of his father's expression. Junior grinned his widest grin and padded the air unceasingly with his pudgy hands. Honey-Bunch slept placidly in Julia's arms.

Julia advanced a little from her group and dropped a single monosyllable. "Well?" she said in an inflexible, questioning voice.

Nobody answered her. Instead Addington called in a beseeching voice: "Angela! Angela! Come to me! Come to dad, baby!"

Angela's dead little wings suddenly flared with life; they fluttered in a very panic. She stretched out her arms to her father. She turned her limpid gaze in an agony of infantile entreaty up to her mother's face. But Peachy shook her head. The baby flutter died down. Angela closed her eyes, dropped her head on her mother's shoulder; the tears started from under her eyelids.

"Shall Angela fly?" Julia asked. "Remember this is your last chance."

"No," Ralph said. And the word was the growl of a balked beast.

"Then," Julia said sternly, "we will leave Angel Island forever."

"You will," Ralph sneered. "You will, will you? All right. Let's see you do it!" Suddenly he started swiftly down toward the trail. "Come, boys!" he commanded. Honey followed—and Billy and Pete.

But, suddenly, Julia spoke. She spoke in the loud, clear tones of her flying days and she used the language of her girlhood. It was a word of command. And as it fell from her lips, the five women leaped from the top of the knoll. But they did not fall into the lake. They did not touch its surface. They flew. Flew—and yet it was not flight. It was half-flight. It was scarcely flight at all. Compared with the magnificent, calm, effortless sweep of their girlhood days, it was almost a grotesque performance. Their wing-stumps beat back and forth violently, beat in a very agony of effort. Indeed these stunted fans could never have held them up. They supplemented their efforts by a curious rotary movement of the legs and feet. They could not rise very far above the surface of the water, especially as each woman was weighted by a child; but they sustained a steady, level flight to the other side of the lake.

The men stared for an instant, petrified. Then panic broke. "Come back, Lulu!" Honey yelled. "Come back!" "Julia!" Billy called hoarsely, "Julia! Julia! Julia!" He went on calling her name as if his senses had left him. Pete's lips moved. Words came, but no voice; he stood like a statue, whispering. Merrill remained silent; obviously he could not even whisper; his was the silence of paralysis. Addington, on the other hand, was all voice. "Oh, my God!" he cried. "Don't leave me, Peachy! Don't leave me! Peachy! Angela! Peachy! Angela!" His voice ascended on the scale of hysteric entreaty until he screeched. "Don't leave me! Don't leave me!" He fell to his knees and held out his arms; the tears poured down his face.

The women heard, turned, flew back. Holding themselves above the men's heads, they fluttered and floated. Their faces were working and the tears flowed freely, but they kept their eyes steadily fixed on Julia, waiting for command.

Julia was ghastly. "Shall Angela fly?" she asked. And it was as though her voice came from an enormous distance, so thin and expressionless and far-away had it become.

"Anything!" Addington said. "Anything! Oh, my God, don't leave us!"

Julia said something. Again this word was in their own language and again it was a word of command. But emotion had come into her voice—joy; it thrilled through the air like a magic fluid. The women sank slowly to earth. In another instant the two forces were in each other's arms.

"Billy," Julia said, as hand in hand they struck into one of the paths that led to the jungle, "will you marry me?"

Billy did not answer. He only looked at her.

"When?" he said finally. "To-morrow?"

"To-day," Julia said.



Sunset on Angel Island.

The Honeymoon House thrilled with excitement. At intervals figures crowded to the narrow door; at intervals faces crowded in the narrow window. Sometimes it was Lulu, swollen and purple and broken with weeping. Sometimes it was Chiquita, pale and blurred and sagging with tears. Often it was Peachy, whose look, white and sodden, steadily searched the distance. Below on the sand, Clara, shriveled, pinched, bent over, her hands writhing in and out of each other's clasp, paced back and forth, her eye moving always on the path. Suddenly she stopped and listened. There came first a faint disturbance of the air, then confusion, then the pounding of feet. Angela, white-faced, frightened, appeared, flying above the trail. "I found him," she called. Behind came Billy, running. He flashed past Clara.

"How is she?" he panted.

"Alive," Clara said briefly.

He flew up the steps. Clara followed. Angela dropped to the sand and Jay there, her little head in the crook of her elbow, sobbing.

Inside a murmur of relief greeted Billy. "He's come, Julia," Peachy whispered softly.

The women withdrew from the inner room as Billy passed over the threshold.

Julia lay on the couch stately and still. One long white hand rested on her breast. The other stretched at her side; its fingers touched a little bundle there. Her wings—the glorious pinions of her girlhood—towered above the pillow, silver-shining, quiescent. Her honey-colored hair piled in a huge crown above her brow. Her eyes were closed. Her face was like marble; but for an occasional faint movement of the hand at her side, she might have been the sculpture on a tomb.

Her lids flickered as Billy approached, opened on eyes as dull as stones. But as they looked up into his, they filled with light.

"My husband—" she said. Her eyes closed.

But presently they opened and with a greater dazzle of light. "Our son—" The hand at her side moved feebly on the little bundle there. That faint movement seemed a great effort. Her eyes closed again.

But for a third time she opened them, and now they shone with their greatest glory. "My husband—our son—has—wings."

And then Julia's eyes closed for the last time.

THE END