“And sometimes how we used to drop like stones until we almost touched the water,” Lulu said, a sparkle in her cooing, friendly little voice.  “And the races!  Oh, what fun!  I can feel the rush of the air now.”

“Over the water.”  Peachy flung her long, slim arms upward and a delicious smile sent the tragedy scurrying from her sunlit face.  “Do you remember how wonderful it was at sunset?  The sky heaving over us, shot with gold and touched with crimson.  The sea pulsing under us lined with crimson and splashed with gold.  And then the sunset ahead — that gold and crimson hole in the sky.  We used to think we could fly through it some day and come out on another world.  And sometimes we could not tell where sea and sky joined.  How we flew — on and on — farther each time — on and on — and on.  The risks we took!  Sometimes I used to wonder if we’d ever have the strength to get home.  Yet I hated to turn back.  I hated to turn away from the light.  I never could fly towards the east at sunset, nor towards the west at sunrise.  It hurt!  I used to think, when my time came to die, that I would fly out to sea — on and on till I dropped.”

“I loved it most at noon,” Chiquita said, “when the air was soft.  It smelled sweet; a mixture of earth and sea.  I used to drift and float on great seas of heat until I almost slept.  That was wonderful; it was like swimming in a perfumed air or flying in a fragrant sea.”

“Oh, but the storms, Julia!” Lulu exclaimed.  A wild look flared in her face, wiped oft entirely its superficial look of domesticity.  “Do you remember the heavy, night-black cloud, the thunder that crashed through our very bodies, the lightning that nearly blinded us, and the rain that beat us almost to pieces?”

“Oh, Lulu!” Julia said; “I had forgotten that.  You were wonderful in a storm, How you used to shout and sing and leap through the air like a wild thing!  I used to love to watch you, and yet I was always afraid that you would hurt yourself.”

“I loved the moonlight most.  I do now.”  The petulance went out of Clara’s eyes; dreams came into its place.  “The cool softness of the air, the brilliant sparkle of the stars!  And then the magic of the moonlight!  Young child-moon, half-grown girl-moon, voluptuous woman-moon, sallow, old-hag-moon, it was alike to me.  Pete says I’m ‘fey’ in the moonlight.  He, says I’m Irish then.”

“I loved the sunrise,” said Julia.  “I used to steal out, when you girls were still sleeping, to fly by dawn.  I’d go up, up, up.  At first, it was like a huge dewdrop — that morning world — then, colder and colder — it was like a melted iceberg.  But I never minded that cold and I loved the clearness.  It exhilarated me.  I used to run races with the birds.  I was not happy until I had beaten the highest-flying of them all.  Oh, it was so fresh and clean then.  The world seemed new-made every morning.  I used to feel that I’d caught the moment when yesterday