Angel Island

Again the five women appeared at the beginning of the trail. Their faces

were white now, hollow and lined; but as ever, they bore a look of

extraordinary pristineness. And this time they brought the children.

Angela lay in her mother's arms like a wilted flower. Her wings sagged

forlornly and her feet were bandaged. But stars of a brilliant blue

flared and died and flared again in her eyes; roses of a living flame

bloomed and faded and bloomed again in her cheek. Her look went straight

to her father's face, clung there in luminous entreaty. Peterkin, more

than ever like a stray from some unreal, pixy world, surveyed the scene

with his big, wondering, gray-green eyes. Honey-Boy, having apparently

just waked, stared, owl-like, his brows pursed in comic reproduction of

his father's expression. Junior grinned his widest grin and padded the

air unceasingly with his pudgy hands. Honey-Bunch slept placidly in

Julia's arms.

Julia advanced a little from her group and dropped a single

monosyllable. "Well?" she said in an inflexible, questioning voice.

Nobody answered her. Instead Addington called in a beseeching voice:

"Angela! Angela! Come to me! Come to dad, baby!"

Angela's dead little wings suddenly flared with life; they fluttered in

a very panic. She stretched out her arms to her father. She turned her

limpid gaze in an agony of infantile entreaty up to her mother's face.

But Peachy shook her head. The baby flutter died down. Angela closed her

eyes, dropped her head on her mother's shoulder; the tears started from

under her eyelids.

"Shall Angela fly?" Julia asked. "Remember this is your last chance."

"No," Ralph said. And the word was the growl of a balked beast.

"Then," Julia said sternly, "we will leave Angel Island forever."

"You will," Ralph sneered. "You will, will you? All right. Let's see you

do it!" Suddenly he started swiftly down toward the trail. Come, boys!"

he commanded. Honey followed - and Billy and Pete.

But, suddenly, Julia spoke. She spoke in the loud, clear tones of her

flying days and she used the language of her girlhood. It was a word of

command. And as it fell from her lips, the five women leaped from the

top of the knoll. But they did not fall into the lake. They did not

touch its surface. They flew. Flew - and yet it was not flight. It was

half-flight. It was scarcely flight at all. Compared with the

magnificent, calm, effortless sweep of their girlhood days, it was

almost a grotesque performance. Their wing-stumps beat back and forth

violently, beat in a very agony of effort. Indeed these stunted fans

could never have held them up. They supplemented their efforts by a

curious rotary movement of the legs and feet. They could not rise very

far above the surface of the water, especially as each woman was

weighted by a child; but they sustained a steady, level flight to the

other side of the lake.