Angel Island

"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 hated to turn back. I

hated to turn away from the light. I never could fly towards the east at

sunset, nor towards the west at sunrise. It hurt! I used to think, when

my time came to die, that I would fly out to sea - on and on till I

dropped."

"I loved it most at noon," Chiquita said, "when the air was soft. It

smelled sweet; a mixture of earth and sea. I used to drift and float on

great seas of heat until I almost slept. That was wonderful; it was like

swimming in a perfumed air or flying in a fragrant sea."

"Oh, but the storms, Julia!" Lulu exclaimed. A wild look flared in her

face, wiped oft entirely its superficial look of domesticity. "Do you

remember the heavy, night-black cloud, the thunder that crashed through

our very bodies, the lightning that nearly blinded us, and the rain that

beat us almost to pieces?"

"Oh, Lulu!" Julia said; "I had forgotten that. You were wonderful in a

storm, How you used to shout and sing and leap through the air like a

wild thing! I used to love to watch you, and yet I was always afraid

that you would hurt yourself."