oating in a milk-warm pool of idleness. It is true that the
women of a household live in certain apartments set aside as a "harem."
But "harem" literally means "forbidden"--that is, forbidden to the
public, nothing more. Every villa at Newport has a "harem."

The women of Morovenia do not pour tea for men every afternoon, and they
are kept well under cover, but they are not slaves. They do not inherit
a nominal authority, but very often they assume a real authority. In the
United States, women can not sail a boat, and yet they direct the cruise
of the yacht. Railway presidents can not vote in the Senate, and yet
they always know how the votes are going to be cast. And in Morovenia,
many a clever woman, deprived of specified and legal rights, has learned
to rule man by those tactful methods which are in such general use that
they need not be specified in this connection.

Kalora had a way of getting around her father. After she had defied him
and put him into a stewing rage, she would smooth him the right way
and, with teasing little cajoleries, nurse him back to a pleasant humor.
He would find himself once more at the starting-place of the
controversy, his stern commands unheeded, and the disobedient daughter
laughing in his very face.

Thus, while he was ashamed of her physical imperfections, he admired her
cleverness. Often he said to Popova: "I tell you, she might make some
man a sprightly and entertaining companion, even if she _is_ slender."

Whereupon the crafty Popova would reply: "Be patient, your Excellency.
We shall yet have her as round as a dumpling."

And all the time he was keeping her trained as fine as the proverbial
fiddle.

IV

THE GARDEN PARTY

Said the Governor-General to himself in that prime hour for wide-awake
meditation--the one just before arising for breakfast: "She is not all
that she should be, and yet, millions of women have been less than
perfect and most of them have married."

He looked hard at the ceiling for a full minute and then murmured, "Even
men have their shortcomings."

This declaration struck him as being sinful and almost infidel in its
radicalism, and yet it seemed to open the way to a logical reason why
some titled bachelor of damaged reputation and tottering finances might
balance his poor assets against a dowry and a social position, even
though he would be compelled to figure Kalora into the bargain.

It must be known that the Governor-General was now