be afraid. They
won't hurt us. We are precious to them. They would rather die than lose
us. They need us more than we need them. They are bound to us by a chain
that they cannot break.' And for a long time that seemed true. What we
had to learn was that we needed them just as much as they needed us,
that we were bound to them by a chain that we could not break.

"I often think"--Julia's voice had become dreamy--"now when it is so
different, of those first few months after the capture. How kind they
were to us, how gentle, how considerate, how delicate, how chivalrous!
Do you remember that they treated us as if we were children, how, for
a long time, they pretended to believe in fairies? Do you remember the
long fairy-hunts in the moonlit jungle, the long mermaid-hunts in the
moonlit ocean? Do you remember the fairy-tales by the fire? It seemed
to me then that life was one long fairy-tale. And how quickly we learned
their language! Has it ever occurred to you that no one of them has ever
bothered to learn ours--none except Frank, and he only because he was
mentally curious? Then came the long wooing. How we argued the marriage
question--discussed and debated--each knowing that the Great Doom was on
her and could not be gain-said.

"Then came the betrothal, the marriages, and suddenly all that wonderful
starlight and firelight life ended. For a while, the men seemed to drift
away from each other. For a while, we--the 'devoted five,' as our people
called us--seemed to drift away from each other. It was as though they
took back something they had freely given each other to give to us. It
was as though we took back something we had freely given each other to
give to them.

"Then, just as suddenly, they began to drift away from us and back
to each other. Some of the high, worshiping quality in their attitude
toward us disappeared. It was as though we had become less beautiful,
less interesting, less desirable--as if possession had killed some
precious, perishable quality."

"What that quality is I do not know. We are not dumb like stones or
plants, we women. We are not dull like birds or beasts. We do not fade
in a day like flowers. We do not stop like music. We do not go out like
light. What it was that went, or when or how, I do not know. But it
was something that thrilled and enchanted them. It went--and it went
forever."

"It was as though we were toys--new toys--with a secret spring. And if
one found and pressed th