I am," she replied.

"And would you object to giving me a condensed recital of it?"

"Not if it can do you any good?"

"What has become of their descendants--of those portraits?"

"They became extinct thousands of years ago."

She became silent again, lost in reverie. The agitation of my mind was
not longer endurable. I was too near the acme of curiosity to longer
delay. I threw reserve aside and not without fear and trembling faltered
out:

"Where are the men of this country? Where do they stay?"

_"There are none_," was the startling reply. "_The race became extinct
three thousand years ago._"

CHAPTER II.

I trembled at the suggestion of my own thoughts. Was this an enchanted
country? Where the lovely blonde women fairies--or some weird beings of
different specie, human only in form? Or was I dreaming?

"I do not believe I understand you," I said. "I never heard of a country
where there were no men. In my land they are so very, very important."

"Possibly," was the placid answer.

"And you are really a nation of women?"

"Yes," she said. "And have been for the last three thousand years."

"Will you tell me how this wonderful change came about?"

"Certainly. But in order to do it, I must go back to our very remote
ancestry. The civilization that I shall begin with must have resembled
the present condition of your own country as you describe it. Prisons
and punishments were prevalent throughout the land."

I inquired how long prisons and places of punishment had been abolished
in Mizora.

"For more than two thousand years," she replied. "I have no personal
knowledge of crime. When I speak of it, it is wholly from an historical
standpoint. A theft has not been committed in this country for many many
centuries. And those minor crimes, such as envy, jealousy, malice and
falsehood, disappeared a long time ago. You will not find a citizen in
Mizora who possesses the slightest trace of any of them.

"Did they exist in earlier times?"

"Yes. Our oldest histories are but records of a succession of dramas in
which the actors were continually striving for power and exercising all
of those ancient qualities of mind to obtain it. Plots, intrigues,
murders and wars, were the active employments of the very ancient rulers
of our land. As soon as death laid its inactivity upon one actor,
another took his place. It might have continued so; and we might still
be repeating the old tragedy but for one singul