ity was a psychological
necessity--or so believed. I found, after my ideas of what was essential
had changed, that my feelings changed also. And more than all, I found
this--a factor of enormous weight--these women were not provocative.
That made an immense difference.

The thing that Terry had so complained of when we first came--that they
weren't "feminine," they lacked "charm," now became a great comfort.
Their vigorous beauty was an aesthetic pleasure, not an irritant. Their
dress and ornaments had not a touch of the "come-and-find-me" element.

Even with my own Ellador, my wife, who had for a time unveiled a woman's
heart and faced the strange new hope and joy of dual parentage, she
afterward withdrew again into the same good comrade she had been at
first. They were women, PLUS, and so much plus that when they did not
choose to let the womanness appear, you could not find it anywhere.

I don't say it was easy for me; it wasn't. But when I made appeal to
her sympathies I came up against another immovable wall. She was sorry,
honestly sorry, for my distresses, and made all manner of thoughtful
suggestions, often quite useful, as well as the wise foresight I have
mentioned above, which often saved all difficulty before it arose; but
her sympathy did not alter her convictions.

"If I thought it was really right and necessary, I could perhaps bring
myself to it, for your sake, dear; but I do not want to--not at all.
You would not have a mere submission, would you? That is not the kind of
high romantic love you spoke of, surely? It is a pity, of course, that
you should have to adjust your highly specialized faculties to our
unspecialized ones."

Confound it! I hadn't married the nation, and I told her so. But she
only smiled at her own limitations and explained that she had to "think
in we's."

Confound it again! Here I'd have all my energies focused on one wish,
and before I knew it she'd have them dissipated in one direction or
another, some subject of discussion that began just at the point I was
talking about and ended miles away.

It must not be imagined that I was just repelled, ignored, left to
cherish a grievance. Not at all. My happiness was in the hands of a
larger, sweeter womanhood than I had ever imagined. Before our marriage
my own ardor had perhaps blinded me to much of this. I was madly in love
with not so much what was there as with what I supposed to be there. Now
I found an endlessly beautiful