ra said. "How we denied everything
you said, every one of us knowing in her heart that you were right!"

"But," Julia said, "later, I told you that I might not be able to help
myself, and you see I wasn't."

"Did they ever guess that we had quarrelled, I wonder?" Clara asked.

"Yes," Lulu answered eagerly. Honey guessed it. "Now, wasn't that clever
of him?"

"Not so very," Clara replied languidly. "I guessed that they had
quarrelled. And I had a strong suspicion," she added consciously, "that
it was about us."

"I wonder," Peachy said somberly, "what would have happened if we had
taken Julia's advice."

"Are you sorry, Peachy?" Julia asked.

"No, I'm not sorry exactly," Peachy answered slowly. "I have Angela, of
course. Are you sorry, Julia?"

"No," replied Julia.

"Julia," Peachy said, "what was it changed you? I have always wanted to
ask but I have never dared. What brought you to the island finally? What
made you give up the fight with us?"

The far-away look in Julia's eyes grew, if possible, more far-away. She
did not speak for a while. Then, "I'll tell you," she said simply. "It
is something that I have never told anybody but Billy. When you first
began to leave me to come to this island alone, I was very unhappy. And
I grew more and more unhappy. I missed flying with you. And especially
flying by night. Flying alone seemed melancholy. I came here at first,
only because I was driven by my loneliness. I said to myself that I'd
drift with the current. But that did not help any. You were all so
interested in your lovers that it made no difference whether I was with
you or not. I began to think that you no longer cared for me, that you
had out-grown me, that all my influence over you had vanished, that, if
I were out of the way, the one tie which held you to me would break and
you would go to these men. I grew more and more unhappy every instant.
That was not all. I was in love with Billy, but I did not know it. I
only knew that I was moody and strange and in desperate despair. And,
so, one day I decided to kill myself."

There was a faint movement in the group, but it was only the swish
of draperies as the four recumbent women came upright. They stared at
Julia. They did not speak. They seemed scarcely to breathe.

"One day, I flew up and up. Never before had I gone half so high. But I
flew deliberately higher and higher until I became cold and colder and
numb and frozen--until my wings stopped. And th