r, and she's a wicked flaunt of womanly
happiness. I tell you, she has been playing with angels, all daintily
plumped out, eyes shining, hands soft and white, her neck all round and
new, lips red, and her voice low and ecstatic with the miracle of it
all. And 'Oh, Vina,' she whispered, 'I almost die to think I might have
refused him! You helped me not to. He loves me, and oh, he's so
wonderful!'... I kissed her in an awed way--and asked about him....
'Oh, he's just a nurseryman--trees, you know, but he lo--we're so
happy!'... Oh, Beth," Vina finished in a lowered voice, "something
eternal, something immortal happens, when a man brings love to a
thirsting woman!"

"Not tea, but strong tea," Beth observed. "Perhaps you think that's a
pretty story--and perhaps it is," she added indefinitely.

Vina seemed hardly to hear. Many matters were revolving in her tired
mind, and as soon as she caught a loose end, she allowed words to come,
for there was some relief in thinking aloud.

"Hasn't the world done for us perfectly, Beth?" she demanded finally.
"Everything is arranged for men, to suit men--it's a man's world--and
we're foreigners. We're forced to stand around and _mind_, before we
understand. If we speak our own language, we're suspected of sedition.
And then we don't stand together. We're continually looking for some
kind male native, and only now and then one of us is lucky.... Hideous
and false old shames are inflicted upon us. We are hungry for many
things, but appear shameless, if we say so... Beth, has it ever
occurred to you that we come--I mean fair and normal women--we come
from a country where there are lots of little children--?"

"The kingdom of heaven, you mean, Vina?"

"Possibly that's it. And when we get here we miss them--want them
terribly. It's all _through_ us--like an abstraction. We know the way
better than the natives here, but they have laws which make us
dependent upon them for the way.... It has not lifted to an abstraction
with our teachers, Beth. A crude concrete thing to them, a matter of
rules broken or not. We must submit, or remain lonely, reviled
foreigners.... Sometimes we discover a native who _could_ bring us back
our own, but he's probably teaching the nearest...."

"We've got to stand together, we foreigners," Beth said laughingly.
"All our different castes must stand together first--and keep the
natives waiting--until in their very eagerness, they suddenly perceive
that we know