we dishonor them by our use of it; we honor them for their
carefully enforced virtue, even while we show by our own conduct how
little we think of that virtue; we value them, sincerely, for the
perverted maternal activities which make our wives the most comfortable
of servants, bound to us for life with the wages wholly at our own
decision, their whole business, outside of the temporary duties of such
motherhood as they may achieve, to meet our needs in every way. Oh, we
value them, all right, "in their place," which place is the home, where
they perform that mixture of duties so ably described by Mrs. Josephine
Dodge Daskam Bacon, in which the services of "a mistress" are carefully
specified. She is a very clear writer, Mrs. J. D. D. Bacon, and
understands her subject--from her own point of view. But--that
combination of industries, while convenient, and in a way economical,
does not arouse the kind of emotion commanded by the women of Herland.
These were women one had to love "up," very high up, instead of down.
They were not pets. They were not servants. They were not timid,
inexperienced, weak.

After I got over the jar to my pride (which Jeff, I truly think, never
felt--he was a born worshipper, and which Terry never got over--he
was quite clear in his ideas of "the position of women"), I found that
loving "up" was a very good sensation after all. It gave me a queer
feeling, way down deep, as of the stirring of some ancient dim
prehistoric consciousness, a feeling that they were right somehow--that
this was the way to feel. It was like--coming home to mother. I don't
mean the underflannels-and-doughnuts mother, the fussy person that waits
on you and spoils you and doesn't really know you. I mean the feeling
that a very little child would have, who had been lost--for ever so
long. It was a sense of getting home; of being clean and rested;
of safety and yet freedom; of love that was always there, warm like
sunshine in May, not hot like a stove or a featherbed--a love that
didn't irritate and didn't smother.

I looked at Ellador as if I hadn't seen her before. "If you won't go,"
I said, "I'll get Terry to the coast and come back alone. You can let me
down a rope. And if you will go--why you blessed wonder-woman--I would
rather live with you all my life--like this--than to have any other
woman I ever saw, or any number of them, to do as I like with. Will you
come?"

She was keen for coming. So the plans went on. Sh