Angel Island

"Why not?" Julia interpolated quietly. "We're the same all the time. We

don't change and grow. Their work does change and grow. It presents new

aspects every day, new questions and problems and difficulties, new

answers and solutions and adjustments. It makes them think all the time.

They love to think." She added this as one who announces a discovery,

long pondered over. "They enjoy thinking."

"Yes," Lulu agreed wonderingly, "that's true, isn't it? That never

occurred to me. They really do like thinking. How curious! I hate to

think."

"I never think," Chiquita announced.

"I won't think," Peachy exclaimed passionately. "I feel. That's the way

to live."

"I don't have to think," Clara declared proudly. "I've something better

than thought-instinct and intuition."

Julia was silent.

"Julia is like them," Lulu said, studying Julia's absent face tenderly.

"She likes to think. It doesn't hurt, or bother, or irritate, or tire -

or make her look old. It's as easy for her as breathing. That's why the

men like to talk to her."

"Well," Clara remarked triumphantly, "I don't have to think in order to

have the men about me. I'm very glad of that."

This was true. The second year of their stay in Angel Island, the other

four women had rebuked Clara for this tendency to keep men about her -

without thinking.

"It is not necessary for us to think," said Peachy with a sudden,

spirited lift of her head from her shoulders. The movement brought back

some of her old-time vivacity and luster. Her thick, brilliant, springy

hair seemed to rise a little from her forehead. And under her draperies

that which remained of what had once been wings stirred faintly. "They

must think just as they must walk because they are earth-creatures. They

cannot exist without infinite care and labor. We don't have to think any

more than we have to walk; for we are air-creatures. And air-creatures

only fly and feel. We are superior to them."

"Peachy," Julia said again. Her voice thrilled as though some thought,

long held quiescent within her, had burst its way to expression. It rang

like a bugle. It vibrated like a violin-string. "That is the mistake

we've made all our lives; a mistake that has held us here tied to this

camp for or four our years;the idea that we are superior in some way,

more strong, more beautiful, more good than they. But think a moment!

Are we? True, we are as you say, creatures of the air. True, we were

born with wings. But didn't we have to come down to the earth to eat and

sleep, to love, to marry, and to bear our young? Our trouble is that - "