“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.”