e.

In a court in our country he would have been held quite "within his
rights," of course. But this was not our country; it was theirs. They
seemed to measure the enormity of the offense by its effect upon a
possible fatherhood, and he scorned even to reply to this way of putting
it.

He did let himself go once, and explained in definite terms that they
were incapable of understanding a man's needs, a man's desires, a man's
point of view. He called them neuters, epicenes, bloodless, sexless
creatures. He said they could of course kill him--as so many insects
could--but that he despised them nonetheless.

And all those stern grave mothers did not seem to mind his despising
them, not in the least.

It was a long trial, and many interesting points were brought out as to
their views of our habits, and after a while Terry had his sentence. He
waited, grim and defiant. The sentence was: "You must go home!"

CHAPTER 12. Expelled

We had all meant to go home again. Indeed we had NOT meant--not by any
means--to stay as long as we had. But when it came to being turned out,
dismissed, sent away for bad conduct, we none of us really liked it.

Terry said he did. He professed great scorn of the penalty and the
trial, as well as all the other characteristics of "this miserable
half-country." But he knew, and we knew, that in any "whole" country we
should never have been as forgivingly treated as we had been here.

"If the people had come after us according to the directions we left,
there'd have been quite a different story!" said Terry. We found out
later why no reserve party had arrived. All our careful directions had
been destroyed in a fire. We might have all died there and no one at
home have ever known our whereabouts.

Terry was under guard now, all the time, known as unsafe, convicted of
what was to them an unpardonable sin.

He laughed at their chill horror. "Parcel of old maids!" he called them.
"They're all old maids--children or not. They don't know the first thing
about Sex."

When Terry said SEX, sex with a very large _S_, he meant the male sex,
naturally; its special values, its profound conviction of being "the
life force," its cheerful ignoring of the true life process, and its
interpretation of the other sex solely from its own point of view.

I had learned to see these things very differently since living with
Ellador; and as for Jeff, he was so thoroughly Herlandized that he
wasn't fair to