Angel Island

There was an interval of intense silence.

"Did you faint?" Peachy asked in an awed voice.

"I wept."

"You wept, Julia?" Peachy said. "You!"

"I had not wept since my childhood. It was strange. It frightened me

almost as much as the fall. Oh, how fast the tears came - and in such

floods! Something melted and went away from me then. A softness came

over me. It was like a spell. I have never been the same creature since.

I cry easily now."

"Did you tell Billy?" Clara asked.

"He saw me," Julia answered.

"He saw - ." It came from her four listeners as from one woman.

"That's what changed him. That's what determined him to help capture us.

He said that he was afraid I would try it again. I wouldn't have,

though."

Nobody spoke for a long time.

"Julia! It was Chiquita who broke the silence this time. There is

something I, too, have always wanted to ask you. But I have never dared

before. What was it tempted you to go into the Clubhouse that day? At

first you tried to keep us from going in. You never seemed to care for

any of the things they gave us. You threw away the fans and the slippers

and the scarfs. And you smashed your mirror."

"Billy asked me this same question once," Julia answered. "It was that

big diamond - the Wilmington 'Blue.' I caught a glimpse of it through

the doorway as it lay all by itself on the table, flashing in the

sunlight. I had never before in my life seen any thing that I really

wanted. But this was so exquisite, so chiseled, so tiny, so perfect,

There was so much fire and color in it. It seemed like a living

creature. I was enchanted by it. When I told Billy, he laughed. He said

that the lust for diamonds was a recognized earth-disease among

earth-people, especially earth-women. He said that many women had been

ruined by it. He said that it was a common saying among men that you

could catch any woman in a trap baited with diamonds. I have never got

over the sting of that. I blush always when I think of it. Because -

although I don't exactly understand why - it was not quite true in my

case. That is a thing which always bothers me in conversation with the

men. They talk about us as if they knew all about us. You'd think they'd

invented us. Not that we're not simple enough. We're perfectly simple,

but they've never bothered to study us. They say so many things about

us, for instance, that are only half true - and yet I don't know exactly

how to confute them. None of us would presume to say such things about

them. I'm glad," she ended with a sudden fierceness, "that I threw the

diamond away."