"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."