But to discard vague phrases and get to the story--for it is not a tract, but a novel--or rather a poetic allegory--that that Mrs. Gillmore has written. Five men of representative modern types--a professor, a libertine, a soldier of fortune, a "mere mutt-man," and an artist--are shipwrecked on a tropical island. After a few days their attention is caught by what appears to be huge birds flying through the heavens. The birds come nearer and prove to be winged women! Then comes the story of their wooing, their capture, their ultimate evolution into what modern women have decided they want to be: humanists. However, this is going too fast. The only way to appreciate _Angel Island_ is to be conscious of the art of it as you read. Beginning with the shipwreck, Mrs. Gillmore creates a series of brilliant pictures that culminate in the flying orgies of the bird-women. ... All this was intensified by the anarchy of sea and sky, by the incessant explosion of the waves, by the wind which seemed to sweep from end to end of a liquefying universe, by a downpour which threatened to beat their sodden bodies to pulp, by all the connotation of terror that lay in the darkness and in their unguarded condition on a barbarous, semi-tropical coast.... The storm, which had seemed to worry the whole universe in its grip, had died finally but it had died hard. On a quieted earth, the sea alone showed signs of revolution. The waves, monstrous, towering, swollen, were still marching on to the beach with a machine-like regularity that was swift and ponderous at the same time.... Beyond the wave-line, under a cover of foam, the jaded sea lay feebly palpitant like an old man asleep.... They had watched the sun come up over the trees at their back. And it was as if they had seen a sunrise for the first time in their lives. To them it was neither beautiful nor familiar; it was sinister and strange. A chill, that was not of the dawn but of death itself, lay over everything. The morning wind was the breath of the tomb, the smells that came to them from the island bore the taint of mortality, the very sun seemed icy. They suffered--the five survivors of the night's tragedy--with a scarifying sense of disillusion with Nature.... The sun was racing up a sky smooth and clear as gray glass. It dropped on the torn green sea a shimmer that was almost dazzling; but there was something incongruous about that--as though Nature had covered her victim with a spangled scarf. It brought out millions of sparkles in the white sand; and there seemed something calculating about that--as though she were bribing them with jewels to forget....