e skill of it, the wonder. But this I soon began to find: that under
all our cultivated attitude of mind toward women, there is an older,
deeper, more "natural" feeling, the restful reverence which looks up to
the Mother sex.

So we grew together in friendship and happiness, Ellador and I, and so
did Jeff and Celis.

When it comes to Terry's part of it, and Alima's, I'm sorry--and
I'm ashamed. Of course I blame her somewhat. She wasn't as fine
a psychologist as Ellador, and what's more, I think she had a
far-descended atavistic trace of more marked femaleness, never apparent
till Terry called it out. But when all is said, it doesn't excuse him. I
hadn't realized to the full Terry's character--I couldn't, being a man.

The position was the same as with us, of course, only with these
distinctions. Alima, a shade more alluring, and several shades less able
as a practical psychologist; Terry, a hundredfold more demanding--and
proportionately less reasonable.

Things grew strained very soon between them. I fancy at first, when
they were together, in her great hope of parentage and his keen joy of
conquest--that Terry was inconsiderate. In fact, I know it, from things
he said.

"You needn't talk to me," he snapped at Jeff one day, just before
our weddings. "There never was a woman yet that did not enjoy being
MASTERED. All your pretty talk doesn't amount to a hill o'beans--I
KNOW." And Terry would hum:

I've taken my fun where I found it.
I've rogued and I've ranged in my time,

and

The things that I learned from the yellow and black,
They 'ave helped me a 'eap with the white.

Jeff turned sharply and left him at the time. I was a bit disquieted
myself.

Poor old Terry! The things he'd learned didn't help him a heap in
Herland. His idea was to take--he thought that was the way. He thought,
he honestly believed, that women like it. Not the women of Herland! Not
Alima!

I can see her now--one day in the very first week of their marriage,
setting forth to her day's work with long determined strides and
hard-set mouth, and sticking close to Ellador. She didn't wish to be
alone with Terry--you could see that.

But the more she kept away from him, the more he wanted her--naturally.

He made a tremendous row about their separate establishments, tried to
keep her in his rooms, tried to stay in hers. But there she drew the
line sharply.

He came away one night, and stamped up and down the moonlit r