“We cannot really understand it,” Ellador concluded. “We are only half a people. We have our woman-ways and they have their man-ways and their both-ways. We have worked out a system of living which is, of course, limited. They must have a broader, richer, better one. I should like to see it.”
“You shall, dearest,” I whispered.
“There’s nothing to smoke,” complained Terry. He was in the midst of a prolonged quarrel with Alima, and needed a sedative. “There’s nothing to drink. These blessed women have no pleasant vices. I wish we could get out of here!”
This wish was vain. We were always under a certain degree of watchfulness. When Terry burst forth to tramp the streets at night he always found a “Colonel” here or there; and when, on an occasion of fierce though temporary despair, he had plunged to the cliff edge with some vague view to escape, he found several of them close by. We were free—but there was a string to it.
“They’ve no unpleasant ones, either,” Jeff reminded him.
“Wish they had!” Terry persisted. “They’ve neither the vices of men, nor the virtues of women—they’re neuters!”
“You know better than that. Don’t talk nonsense,” said I, severely.
I was thinking of Ellador’s eyes when they gave me a certain look, a look she did not at all realize.
Jeff was equally incensed. “I don’t know what ‘virtues of women’ you miss. Seems to me they have all of them.”
“They’ve no modesty,” snapped Terry. “No patience, no submissiveness, none of that natural yielding which is woman’s greatest charm.”