“How do you vote here?” I asked. “What are your qualifications and restrictions?”
“Briefly told,” he replied. “Every citizen may vote on all public questions, and in all elections.”
“But what constitutes citizenship?”
“A native-born is a citizen when he or she reaches maturity. Foreigners are treated as minors until they have lived as long under the government as it takes for a child to come of age. It is thus,” he added, facetiously, “that we punish people for presuming to be born outside our happy country.”
“Excuse me,” I said, “but do I understand you to say that your women have the right of suffrage?”
“Assuredly. Do not yours?”
“Indeed no!” I replied, the masculine instinct of superiority swelling within me.
Severnius wears spectacles. He adjusted them carefully on his nose and looked at me.
“But did you not tell me just now that your country is a republic?”
“It is, but we do not hold that women are our political equals,” I answered.