If the women innovate and rebel the least that happens to them is that the men won't marry them—isn't that so?"

"I shouldn't think vou would call that a penalty, my dear," I answered.

"Oh, yes, it is; it means extinction— the end of that variety of woman. You seem to have quite successfully checked mutation in women; and they had neither education, opportunity, or encouragement in other variation."

"Don't say 'you,'" I urged. "These are the women of the Orient you are talking about, not of all the world. Everybody knows that their position is pitiful and a great check to progress. Wait till you see my country!"

"I shall be glad to get there, dearest, I'm sure of that," she told me. "But as to these more progressive men among the Egyptians—there was no penalty for improving on the shadoof, was there? Or the method of threshing grain by the feet of cattle ?"

Then I explained, trying to show no irritation, that there was a difference in the progressiveness of nations, of various races; but that other things being equal, the men were as a rule more progressive than the women."

"Where are the other things equal, Van?"

I had to laugh at that; she was a very difficult person to argue with; but I told her they were pretty near equal in our United States, and that we thought our women fully as good as men, and a little tetter. She was comforted for a while, but as we went on into Asia, her spirit sank and darkened, and that change I spoke of became apparent.

Burmah was something of a comfort, and that surviving matriarchate in the island hills. But in our rather extended visit to India, guided and informed by both English and native friends, and supplied with further literature, she began to suffer deeply.

We had the rare good fortune to be allowed to accompany a scientific expedition up through the wonder of the Himalayas, through Thibet, and into China. Here that high sweet spirit drooped and shrunk, with a growing horror, a loathing, such as I had never seen before in her clear eyes. She was shocked beyond words at the vast area of dead country; skeleton country, deforested, deshrubbed, degrassed, wasted to the bone, lying there to burn in the sun and drown in the rain, feeding no one.

"Van, Van," she said. "Help me to forget the women a little and talk about the land! Help me to understand the— the holes in the minds of people. Here is intelligence, intellect, a high cultural development—of sorts. They have beautiful art in some lines. They have an extensive literature. They are old, very old, surely old enough to have learned more than any other people. And yet here is proof that they have never mastered the simple and obvious facts of how to take care of the land on which they live."

"But they still live on it, don't they ?"

"Yes—they live on it. But they live on it like swarming fleas on an emaciated kitten, rather than careful farmers on a well-cultivated ground. However," she brightened a little, "there's one thing; this horrible instance of a misused devastated land must have been of one great service. It must have served as an object lesson to all the rest of the world. Where such an old and wise nation has made so dreadful a mistake—for so long, at least no other nation need to make it."

I did not answer as fully and cheerfully as she wished, and she pressed me further.

"The world has learned how to save its trees—its soil—its beauty—its fertility, hasn't it? Of course, what I've seen is not all—it's better in other places ?"

"We did not go to Germany, you know, my dear. They have a high degree of skill in forestry there. In many countries it is now highly thought of. We are taking steps to preserve our own forests, though, so far, they are so extensive that we rather forgot there was any end of them."

"It will be good to get there, Van," and she squeezed my hand hard. "I must see it all. I must 'know the worst'—and surely I am getting the worst first! But you have free education—you have every advantage of climate—you have a mixture of the best blood on earth, of the best traditions. And you are brave and free and willing to learn. Oh, Van! I am so glad it was America that found us!"

I held her close and kissed her. I was glad, too. And I was proud clear through to have her speak so of us. Yet, still—I was not as perfectly comfortable about it as I had been at first.

She had read about the foot-binding process still common in so large a part of China, but somehow had supposed it was a thing of the past, and never general.