Upon this I was assailed with a whole battery of inquiries, which at first I tried to avoid; but, at last, I was compelled, in the vaguest manner I could invent, to make some approach to the subject in question.
Immediately a dim notion of what I meant, seemed to dawn in the minds of most of the women.

Some of them folded their great wings all around them, as they generally do when in the least offended, and stood erect and motionless.

One spread out her rosy pinions, and flashed from the promontory into the gulf at its foot.

A great light shone in the eyes of one maiden, who turned and walked slowly away, with her purple and white wings half dispread behind her.

She was found, the next morning, dead beneath a withered tree on a bare hill-side, some miles inland.