ty hard word for it. After all, Alima was
his wife, you know," I urged, feeling at the moment a sudden burst of
sympathy for poor Terry. For a man of his temperament--and habits--it
must have been an unbearable situation.

But Ellador, for all her wide intellectual grasp, and the broad sympathy
in which their religion trained them, could not make allowance for
such--to her--sacrilegious brutality.

It was the more difficult to explain to her, because we three, in our
constant talks and lectures about the rest of the world, had naturally
avoided the seamy side; not so much from a desire to deceive, but from
wishing to put the best foot foremost for our civilization, in the face
of the beauty and comfort of theirs. Also, we really thought some things
were right, or at least unavoidable, which we could readily see would be
repugnant to them, and therefore did not discuss. Again there was much
of our world's life which we, being used to it, had not noticed as
anything worth describing. And still further, there was about these
women a colossal innocence upon which many of the things we did say had
made no impression whatever.

I am thus explicit about it because it shows how unexpectedly strong
was the impression made upon Ellador when she at last entered our
civilization.

She urged me to be patient, and I was patient. You see, I loved her so
much that even the restrictions she so firmly established left me much
happiness. We were lovers, and there is surely delight enough in that.

Do not imagine that these young women utterly refused "the Great New
Hope," as they called it, that of dual parentage. For that they had
agreed to marry us, though the marrying part of it was a concession
to our prejudices rather than theirs. To them the process was the holy
thing--and they meant to keep it holy.

But so far only Celis, her blue eyes swimming in happy tears, her
heart lifted with that tide of race-motherhood which was their supreme
passion, could with ineffable joy and pride announce that she was to
be a mother. "The New Motherhood" they called it, and the whole country
knew. There was no pleasure, no service, no honor in all the land that
Celis might not have had. Almost like the breathless reverence with
which, two thousand years ago, that dwindling band of women had watched
the miracle of virgin birth, was the deep awe and warm expectancy with
which they greeted this new miracle of union.

All mothers in that land wer