Five! As different as can be. With a long time between, evidently, so that the ruins were forgotten, and a new people built a new city on the site of the old one. It is wonderful."

Then she turned suddenly on Signor Armini. "What did they die of?" she demanded.

"Die of? Who, madam?"

"Those cities—those civilizations?"

"Why, they were conquered in war, doubtless; the inhabitants were put to the sword—some carried away as slaves, perhaps—and the cities razed to the ground ?"

"By whom?" she demanded. "Who did it?"

"Why, other peoples, other cultures, from other cities ?'

"Do you mean other peoples, or just other men ?" she asked.

He was puzzled. "Why, the soldiers were men, of course, but war was made by one nation against another."

"Do you mean that the women of the other nations were the governing power and sent the men to fight ?"

No, he did not mean that.

"And surely the children did not send them?"

Of course not.

"But people are men, women and children, aren't they? And only the adult men, about one-fifth of the population, made war?"

This he admitted perforce, and Ellador did not press the point further.

"But in these cities were all kinds of people, wern't there? Women and children, as well as men ?"

This was obvious, also; and then she branched off a little: "What made them want to conquer a city?"

"Either fear—or revenge—or desire for plunder. Oftenest that. The ancient cities were the centers of production, of course." And he discoursed on the beautiful handicrafts of the past, the rich fabrics, the jewels and carved work and varied treasures.

"Who made them," she asked.

"Slaves, for the most part," he answered.

"Men and women ?"

"Yes—men and women."

"I see," said Ellador. She saw more than she spoke of, even to me. In ancient Egypt she found much that pleased her in the power and place of historic womanhood. This satisfaction was shortlived as we went on eastward.

With a few books, with eager questioning of such experts as we met, and what seemed to me an almost supernatural skill in eliciting valuable and apposite information from unexpected quarters, my lady from Herland continued to fill her mind and her note-books.

To me, who grew more and more to admire her, to reverence her, to tenderly love her, as we traveled on together, there now appeared a change in her spirit, more alarming even than that produced by Europe's war. It was like the difference between the terror roused in one surrounded by lions, and the loathing experienced in the presence of hideous reptiles, this not in the least at the people, but at certain lamentable social conditions.

In visiting our world she had been most unfortunately first met by the hot horrors of war; and I had thought to calm her by the static nations, the older peoples, sitting still among their ruins, richly draped in ancient and interesting histories. But a very different effect was produced. What she had read, while it prepared her to understand the sequence of affairs, had in no case given what she recognized as the really important events and their results.

"I'm writing a little history of the world," she told me, with a restrained smile. "Just a little one, so that I can have something definite to show them."

"But how can you, dearest—in this time, with what da'ta you have ? I know you are wonderful—but a history of the world!"

"Only a little one," she answered. "Just a synopsis. You know we are used to condensing and simplifying for our children. I suppose that is where we get the 'grasp of salient features' you have spoken of so often. These historians I read now certainly do not have it."

She continued tender to me, more so if anything. Of two things we talked with pleasure: of Herland and my land, and always of the beauty of nature. This seemed to her a ceaseless source of strength and comfort.

"It's the same world," she said, as we leaned side by side on the rail at the stern, and watched the white wake run uncoiling away from us, all silver-shining under the round moon. "The same sky, the same stars, some of them, the same blessed sun and moon. And the dear grass—and the trees—the precious trees."

Being by profession a forester, it was inevitable that she should notice trees; and in Europe she found much to admire, though lamenting the scarcity of foodbearing varieties. In Northern Africa she had noted the value of the palm, the olive, and others, and had readily understood the whole system of irrigation and its enormous benefits. What she did not easily grasp was its disuse, and the immeasurable futility of the fellaheen, still using the shadoof after all these ages of progress.

"I dont' see yet," she admitted, "what makes their minds so—so impervious. It can't be because they're men, surely. Men are not duller than women, are they, dear?"

"Indeed they are not!" I cried, rather stung by this new suggestion. "Men are the progressive sex, the thinkers, the innovators. It is the women who are conservative and slow. Even you will have to admit that."

"I certainly will if I find it so," she answered cheerfully. "I can see that these women are dull enough. But then —if they do things differently there are penalties, aren't there ?"

"Penalties?"

"Why, yes.