ong time.
Then I went to the chest, took out my wings, brought them downstairs
and--and--and--."

"What?" somebody whispered.

"Burned them!" Julia's deep voice swelled on the word "burned" as though
she still felt the scorching agony of that moment.

For a long moment, nobody spoke.

Julia asked their question for them. "Do you want to know why I did it?"
And without waiting, she answered, "Because I wanted to mark in some way
the end of my desire to fly. We must stop wanting to fly, we women. We
must stop wasting our energy brooding over what's past. We must stop it
at once. Not only that but--for Angela's sake and for the sake of all
girl-children who will be born on this island--we must learn to walk."

"Learn to walk!" Peachy repeated. "Julia, have you gone mad? We have
always held out against this degradation. We must continue to do
so." Again came that proud lift of her shoulders, the vibrant stir of
wing-stumps. "That would lower us to a level with men."

"But are we lowering ourselves?" Julia asked. "Are they really on a lower
level? Isn't the earth as good as the air?"

"It's better, Julia," Lulu said unexpectedly. "The earth's a fine place.
It's warm and homelike. Things grow there. There's nothing in the air."

"There are the stars," murmured Peachy.

"Yes," said Julia with a soft tenderness, "but we never reached them."

"The air-life may not have been better or finer," Peachy continued,
"but, somehow, it seemed clearer and purer. The earth's such a cluttered
place. It's so full of things. You can hardly see it for the stuff
that's on it. From above it seems beautiful, but near--."

"Yet, it is on the earth that we must live--and that Angela must live,"
Julia interpolated gently.

"But what is the use of our learning to walk?" Peachy demanded.

"To teach Angela how to walk and all the other girl-children that are
coming to us."

"But I am afraid," Peachy said anxiously, "that if Angela learned to
walk, she would forget how to fly."

"On the contrary," Julia declared, "she would fly better for knowing how
to walk, and walk better for knowing how to fly."

"I don't see it," interposed Clara emphatically. "I don't see what we
get out of walking or what Angela will get out of it. Suppose we learned
to walk? The men would stop helping us along. We'd lose the appeal of
helplessness."

"But what is there about what you call 'the appeal of helplessness'
that makes it worth keeping?" Julia asked