Angel Island

Lulu had not grown big, but she had grown round. That look of the

primitive woman which had made her strange, had softened and sobered.

Her beaute troublante had gone. Her face was, the face of a happy woman.

The maternal look in her eyes was duplicated by the married look in her

figure. She was always busy. Even now, though she chattered, she sewed;

her little fingers fluttered like the wings of an imprisoned bird.

Indeed, she looked like a little sober mother-bird in her gray and brown

draperies. She was the best housewife among them. Honey lacked no

creature comfort.

Clara also had filled out; in figure, she had improved; her elfin

thinness had become slimness, delicately curved and subtly contoured.

Also her coloring had deepened; she was like a woman cast in gold. But

her expression was not pleasant. Her light, gray-green eyes had a

petulant look; her thin, red lips a petulant droop. She was restless;

something about her moved always. Either her long slender fingers

adjusted her hair or her long slender feet beat a tattoo. And ever her

figure shifted from one fluid pose to another. She wore jewels in her

elaborately arranged hair, jewels about her neck, on her wrists, on her

fingers. Her green draperies were embroidered in beads. She was, in

fact, always dressed, costumed is perhaps the most appropriate word. She

dressed Peterkin picturesquely too; she was always, studying the

illustrations in their few books for ideas. Clara was one of those women

at whom instinctively other women gaze - and gaze always with a

question in their eyes.

Peachy was at the height of her blonde bloom; all pearl and gold, all

rose and aquamarine. But something had gone out of her face -

brilliance. And something had come into it - pathos. The look of a

mischievous boy had turned to a wild gipsy look of strangeness, a look

of longing mixed with melancholy. In some respects there was more

history written on her than on any of the others. But it was tragic

history. At Angela's birth Peachy had gone insane. There had come times

when for 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.