was sitting on
a flat stone that projected into the water. Her drooped blue wings,
glittering with moisture, had finally come to rest; they trailed behind
her over the gray boulder and into a mass of vivid green water-grasses.
One bare shoulder had broken through her rose-and-blue drapery. The odor
of flowers, came from her. Her hair, a braid over each breast, oozed
like ropes of melted gold to her knees. A hand held each of these
braids. She was evidently preoccupied. Her eyelids were down. Absently
she dabbled her white feet in the water. The noise of her splashing
covered their approach. The two men signaled their plans, separated.

Five minutes went by, and ten and fifteen and twenty. Peachy still sat
silent, moveless, meditative. Not once did she lift her eyelids.

Then Addington leaped like a cat from the bushes at her right.
Simultaneously Honey pounced in her direction from the left.

But--whir-r-r-r--it was like the beating of a tremendous drum. Straight
across the pond she went, her toes shirring the water, and up and up
and up--then off. And all the time she laughed, a delicious, rippling
laughter which seemed to climb every scale that could carry coquetry.

The two men stood impotently watching her for a moment. Then Honey broke
into roars of delight. "Oh, you kid!" he called appreciatively to her.
"She had her nerve with her to sit still all the time, knowing that we
were creeping up on her, didn't she?" He turned to Ralph.

But Ralph did not answer, did not hear. His face was black with rage. He
shook his fist in Peachy's direction.

Of the flying-girls, there remained now only one who held herself aloof,
the "quiet one." It was many weeks before she visited the island. Then
she came often, though always alone. There was something in her attitude
that marked her off from the others.

"She doesn't come because she wants to," Billy Fairfax explained. "She
comes because she's lonely."

The "quiet one" habitually flew high and kept high, so high indeed that,
after the first excitement of her tardy appearance, none but Billy gave
her more than passing attention. Up to that time Billy had been a hard,
a steady worker. But now he seemed unable to concentrate on anything.
It was doubtless an extra exasperation that the "quiet one" puzzled him.
Her flying seemed to be more than a haphazard way of passing the time.
It seemed to have a meaning; it was almost as if she were trying to
accomplish something by it