So there we sat, at ease; all in similar dress; our hair, by now, as long as theirs, only our beards to distinguish us. We did not want those beards, but had so far been unable to induce them to give us any cutting instruments.
“Ladies,” Terry began, out of a clear sky, as it were, “are there no men in this country?”
“Men?” Somel answered. “Like you?”
“Yes, men,” Terry indicated his beard, and threw back his broad shoulders. “Men, real men.”
“No,” she answered quietly. “There are no men in this country. There has not been a man among us for two thousand years.”
Her look was clear and truthful and she did not advance this astonishing statement as if it was astonishing, but quite as a matter of fact.
“But—the people—the children,” he protested, not believing her in the least, but not wishing to say so.
“Oh yes,” she smiled. “I do not wonder you are puzzled. We are mothers—all of us—but there are no fathers. We thought you would ask about that long ago—why have you not?” Her look was as frankly kind as always, her tone quite simple.
Terry explained that we had not felt sufficiently used to the language, making rather a mess of it, I thought, but Jeff was franker.
“Will you excuse us all,” he said, “if we admit that we find it hard to believe? There is no such—possibility—in the rest of the world.”