r hours she shrieked
or whispered, "My wings! My wings! My wings!" The devoted care of the
other four women had saved her; she was absolutely normal now. Her
figure still carried its suggestion of a potential, young-boy-like
strength, but maternity had given a droop, exquisitely feminine, to the
shoulders. She always wore blue--something that floated and shimmered
with every move.

Julia had changed little; for in her case, neither marriage nor
maternity had laid its transmogrifying, touch upon her. Her deep
blue-gray eyes--of which the brown-gold lashes seemed like reeds
shadowing lonely lakes--had turned as strange as Peachy's; but it was
a different strangeness. Her mouth--that double sculpturesque ripple of
which the upper lip protruded an infinitesimal fraction beyond the lower
one--drooped like Clara's; but it drooped with a different expression.
She had the air of one who looks ever into the distance and broods on
what she sees there. Perhaps because of this, her voice had deepened
to a thrilling intensity. Her hair was pulled straight back to her neck
from the perfect oval of her face. It hung in a single, honey-colored
braid, and it hung to the very ground. She always wore white.

"Do you remember"--Chiquita began presently. Her lazy purring voice grew
soft with tenderness. The dreamy, unthinking Chiquita of four years
back seemed suddenly to peer through the unwieldy Chiquita of the
present--"how we used to fly--and fly--and fly--just for the love of
flying? Do you remember the long, bright day-flyings and the long, dark
night-flyings?

"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 h