hat those girls packed me through the air,
I did some quick thinking, I can't explain to you why we've got the
right to capture them. But we have. That's all there is to it."

War broke out with a new animosity; for they had, of course, now
definitely divided into sides. Their conversation always turned into
argument now, no matter how peaceably and innocently it began.

The girls had begun to visit the island again, singly now, singly
always. Discussion died down temporarily and the wordless tete-a-teteing
began again. Lulu hovered ever at Honey's shoulder. Clara postured
always within Pete's vision. Chiquita took up her eternal vigil on
Frank's reef. Peachy discovered new wonders of what Honey called "trick
flying." Julia became a fixed white star in their blue noon sky.

A day or two or three of this long-distance wooing, and argument
exploded more vehemently than ever. Honey and Ralph still maintained
that, as the ruling sex of a man-managed world, they had the right of
discovery to these women. Frank still maintained that, as a supra-human
race, the flying-girls were subject to supra-human laws. Billy and Pete
still maintained that, as the development not only of the race but of
the individual depended on the treatment of the female by the male, the
capture of these independent beings at this stage of civilization would
be a return to barbarism.

After one night of wrangling, they came to the agreement that no one of
them would take steps towards capture until all five had consented to
it. They drew up a paper to this effect and signed it.

Their cabins were nearly completed now. Boundless leisure threatened to
open before them. More and more in the time which they were alone they
fell into the habits which their individual tastes developed. Frank
still worked on his library. He had transferred the desk and the
bookcases to the interior of his hut. He spent all his spare time there
arranging, classifying, and cataloguing his books. Billy fell into an
orgy of furniture-making and repairing. Addington began, unaided, to
build a huge cabin, bigger than the others, and separated a little
distance from them. Nobody asked him what it was for. Honey took long
solitary walks into the interior of the island. He returned with great
bunches of uprooted flowers which he planted against the cabin-walls.
Pete dragged out from an unexplored trunk a box of water-colors, a
block of paper. Now, when he was not working on a symph