“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—”
And just then, “Here they come!” Lulu cried happily.
Lulu’s eyes turned away from the group of women. Her brown face had lighted as though somebody had placed a torch beside it. The strings of little dimples that her plumpness had brought in its wake played about her mouth.