“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.”