A little of this and then came another impulse.  The great wings furled close like blades leaping back to scabbard; the flying-girls dropped sheer in a dizzying fall.  Half-way to the ground, they stopped simultaneously as if caught by some invisible air plateau.  The great feathery fans opened — and this time the men got the whipping whirr of them — spread high, palpitated with color.  From this lower level, the girls began to fall again, but gently, like dropping clouds.

Nearer they came to the petrified group on the beach, nearer and nearer.  Undoubtedly they had known all the time that an audience was there; undoubtedly they had planned this; they looked down and smiled.

And now the men had every detail of them — the brown seaweeds and green sea-grasses that swathed them, their bodies just short of heroic size, deep-bosomed, broad-waisted, long-limbed; their arms round like a woman’s and strong like a man’s; their hair that fell, a braid over each ear, twined with brilliant flowers and green vines; their faces super-humanly beautiful, though elvish; the gaminerie in their laughing eyes, which sparkled through half-closed, thick-lashed lids, the gaminerie in their smiling mouths, which showed twin rows of pearl gleaming in tricksy mirth; their big, strong-looking, long-fingered hands; their slimly smooth, exquisitely shaped, too-tiny, transparent feet; their strong wrists; their stem-like, breakable ankles.  Closer and closer and closer they came.  And now the men could almost touch them.  They paused an instant and fluttered — fluttered like a swarm of butterflies undecided where to fly.  As though choosing to rest, they hovered-hovered with a gentle, slow, seductive undulation of wings, of hands, of feet.

Then another impulse took them.

They broke handclasps and up they went, like arrows straight up — up — up — up.  Then they turned out to sea, streaming through the air in line still, but one behind the other.  And for the first time, sound came from them; they threw off peals of girl-laughter that fell like handfuls of diamonds.  Their mirth ended in a long, eerie cry.  Then straight out to the eastern horizon they went and away and off.

They were dwindling rapidly.

They were spots.

They were specks.

They were nothing.

II

Silence, profound, portentous, protracted, followed.

Finally, Honey Smith absently stooped and picked up a pebble.  He threw it over the silver ring of the flat, foam-edged, low-tide waves.  It curved downwards, hissed across a surface of water smooth as jade, skipped four times, and dropped.

The men strained their eyes to follow the progress of this tangible thing.

“Where do you suppose they’ve gone?” Honey said as unexcitedly as one might inquire directions from a stranger.

“When do you suppose they’ll come back?” Billy Fairfax added as casually as one might ask the time.