The difficulties of maintaining existence prevented any higher developments."

"I see, I see." she nodded gravely. "Then why is it, in the face of these facts, that some still persist in attributing progress to difficulties, and cold weather."

This professor, who was himself Italian, was quite willing to question this opinion.

"That theory you will find is quite generally confined to the people who live in the colder climates," he suggested.

When Ellador discussed this with me, she went further. "It seems as if, when people say—'The World' they mean their own people," she commented. "I've been reading history as written by the North European races. Perhaps when we get to Persia, India, China and Japan, it will be different."

It was different. I had spent my own youth in the most isolated of modern nations, the one most ignorant of and indifferent to all the others; the one whose popular view of foreigners is based on the immigrant classes, and whose travelling rich consider Europe as a play-ground, a picture gallery, a museum, a place wherein to finish one's education. Being so reared, and associating with similarly minded persons, my early view of history was a great helter-skelter surging background to the clear, strong, glorious incidents of our own brief national career; while geography consisted of the vivid large scale familiar United States, and a globe otherwise covered with more or less nebulous maps; and such political evolution as I had in mind consisted of the irresistible development of our own "instiutions."

All this, of course, was my youthful attitude. In later studies I had added a considerable knowledge of general history, sociology and the like, but had never realized until now how remote all this was to me from the definite social values already solidly established in my mind.

Now, associating with Ellador, dispassionate and impartial as a visiting angel, bringing to her studies of the world, the triple freshness of view of one of different stock, different social development, and different sex, I began to get a new perspective. To her the world was one field of general advance. Her own country held the foreground in her mind, of course, but she had left it as definitely as if she came from Mars, and was studying the rest of humanity in the mass. Her alien point of view, her previous complete ignorance, and that powerful well-ordered mind she brought to bear on the new knowledge so rapidly amassed, gave her advantages as an observer far beyond our best scientists.

The one special and predominant distinction given to her studies by her supreme femininity, was what gave me the most numerous, and I may say, unpleasant surprises. In my world studies I had always assumed that humanity did thus and so, but she was continually sheering through the tangled facts with her sharp distinction that this and this phenomenon was due to masculinity alone.

"But Ellador," I protested, "why do you say—'the male Scandinavians continually indulged in piracy,' and 'the male Spaniards practiced terrible cruelties,' and so on? It sounds so—invidious—as if you were trying to make out a case against men."

"Why, I wouldn't do that for anything!" she protested. "I'm only trying to understand the facts. You don't mind when I say 'the male Phoenicians made great progress in navigation,' or 'the male Greeks developed great intelligence,' do you?"

"That's different," I answered. "They did do those things."

"Didn't they do the others, too?"

"Well—yes—they did them, of course; but why rub it in that they were exclusively males?"

"But weren't they, dear? Really? Did the Norse women raid the coasts of England and France? Did the Spanish women cross the ocean and torture the poor Aztecs?"

"They would have if they could !" I protested.

"So would the Phoenician women and Grecian women in the other cases— wouldn't they?"

I hesitated.

"Now my Best Beloved," she said, holding my hand in both hers and looking deep into my eyes—"Please, oh please, don't mind. The facts are there, and they are immensely important. Think, dearest. We of Herland have known no men—till now. We, alone, in our tiny land, have worked out a happy, healthy life. Then you came—you' 'Wonderful Three.' Ah! You should realize the stir, the excitement, the Great Hope that it meant to us! We knew there was more world—but nothing about it, and you meant a vast new life to us. Now I come to see—to learn—for the sake of my country.

"Because, you see, some things we gathered from you made us a little afraid. Afraid for our children, you see. Perhaps it was better, after all, to live up there, alone, in ignorance, but in happiness, we thought. Now I've come—to see—to learn—to really understand, if I can, so as to tell my people.

"You mustn't think I'm against men, dear. Why, if it were only for your sake, I would love them. And I'm sure—we are all sure at home (or at least most of us are) that two sexes, working together, must be better than one.

"Then I can see how, being two sexes, and having so much more complex a problem than ours, and having all kinds of countries to live in—how you got into difficulties we never knew.

"I'm making every allowance. I'm firm in my conviction of the superiority of the bisexual method. It must be best or it would not have been evolved in all the higher animals. But—but you can't expect me to ignore facts."

No, I couldn't. What troubled me most was that I, too, began to see facts, quite obvious facts, which I had never noticed before.

Wherever men had been superior to women we had proudly claimed it as a sex-distinction. Wherever men had shown evil traits, not common to women, we had serenely treated them as racecharacteristics.

So, although I did not enjoy it, I did not dispute any further Ellador's growing collection of facts. It was just as well not to. Facts are stubborn things.

We visited a little in Tunis, Algiers, and Cairo, making quite an excursion in Egypt, with our steamship acquaintance, whose knowledge was invaluable to us. He translated inscriptions; showed us the more important discoveries, and gave condensed accounts of the vanished civilizations.

Ellador was deeply impressed.

"To think that under one single city, here in Abydos, there are the remains of five separate cultures.