"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 - "