Clara never flew high. It was apparent, however, that if she made a
tremendous effort, she could take any height. On the other hand, she
flew more swiftly than either Lulu or Chiquita. She seemed to keep by
preference to the middle altitudes. She hated wind and fog; she appeared
only in calm and dry weather. Perhaps this was because the wind
interfered with her histrionics, the fog with the wavy complications of
her red hair. For she postured as she moved; whatever her hurry, she
presented a picture, absolutely composed. And her hair was always
intricately arranged, always decked with leaves and flowers.
"By jiminy, I'd make my everlasting fortune off you," Honey Smith once
addressed her, as she flew over his head, "selling you to the
moving-picture people."
Wings straight up, legs straight out, arms straight ahead, delicately
slender feet, and strong-looking hands dropping like flowers, her only
answer to this remark was an enigmatic closing of her thick-lashed lids,
a twist into a pose even more sensuously beautiful.
"Say, I'm tired waiting," Ralph Addington growled one day, when the
lovely trio flew over his head in a group. "Why doesn't that blonde of
mine put in an appearance? Oh, Clara, Lulu, Chiquita," he called, "won't
you bring your peachy friend the next time you call?"
It was a long time, however, before the "peachy one" appeared. Then
suddenly one day a great jagged shadow enveloped them in its purple
coolness. The men looked up, startled. She must have come upon them
slowly and quietly, for she was close. Her mischievous face smiled
alluringly down at them from the wide triangle of her blue wings.
Followed an exhibition of flying which outdid all the others.
Dropping like a star from the zenith and dropping so close and so
swiftly that the men involuntarily scattered to give her landing-room,
she caught herself up within two feet of their heads and bounded
straight up to the zenith again. Up she went, and up and up until she
was only a blue shimmer; and up and up and up until she was only a dark
dot. Then, without warning, again she dropped, gradually this time,
head-foremost like' a diver, down and down and down until her body was
perfectly outlined, down and down and down until she floated just above
their heads.
Coming thus slowly upon them, she gave, for the first time, a close view
of her wonderful blondeness. It was a sheer golden blondeness, not a
hint of tow, or flaxen, or yellow; not a touch of silver, or honey, or
auburn. It was half her charm that the extraordinary strength and vigor
of her contours contrasted with the delicacy and dewiness of her
coloring, that from one aspect, she seemed as frail as a flower, from
another as hard as a crystal. She had, at the same time, the untouched,
unstained beauty of the virgin girl, and the hard, muscular strength of
the virgin boy. Her skin, white as a lily-petal and as thick and smooth,
had been deepened by a single drop of amber to cream. Her eyes, of which
the sculpturesque lids drooped a little, flashed a blue as limpid as the
sky. Teeth, set as close as seed-pearls, gleamed between lips which were
the pink of the faded rose. The sunlight turned her golden hair to spun
glass, melted it to light itself. The shadow thickened it to fluid,
hardened it to massy gold again. The details of her face came out only
as the result of determined study. Her chief beauty - and it amounted to
witchery, to enchantment - lay in a constant and a constantly subtle
change of expression.