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."

I shook my head pityingly. "Go and apologize and make friends again,
Terry. You've got a grouch, that's all. These women have the virtue
of humanity, with less of its faults than any folks I ever saw. As for
patience--they'd have pitched us over the cliffs the first day we lit
among 'em, if they hadn't that."

"There are no--distractions," he grumbled. "Nowhere a man can go and cut
loose a bit. It's an everlasting parlor and nursery."

"And workshop," I added. "And school, and office, and laboratory, and
studio, and theater, and--home."

"HOME!" he sneered. "There isn't a home in the whole pitiful place."

"There isn't anything else, and you know it," Jeff retorted hotly. "I
never saw, I never dreamed of, such universal peace and good will and
mutual affection."

"Oh, well, of course, if you like a perpetual Sunday school, it's all
very well. But I like Something Doing. Here it's all done."

There was something to this criticism. The years of pioneering lay far
behind them. Theirs was a civilization in which the initial difficulties
had long since been overcome. The untroubled peace, the unmeasured
plenty, the steady health, the large good will and smooth m