“Julia is like them,” Lulu said, studying Julia’s absent face tenderly.  “She likes to think.  It doesn’t hurt, or bother, or irritate, or tire — or make her look old.  It’s as easy for her as breathing.  That’s why the men like to talk to her.”

“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.