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But of Jeff I heard somewhat; he was inclined to dwell reverently and admiringly, at some length, on the exalted sentiment and measureless perfection of his Celis; and Terry Terry made so many false starts and met so many rebuffs, that by the time he really settled down to win Alima, he was considerably wiser. At that, it was not smooth sailing.
"Staying in it? All the time?" asked Ellador. "Not imprisoned, surely!" "Of course not! Living there naturally," he answered. "What does she do there all the time?" Alima demanded. "What is her work?" Then Terry patiently explained again that our women did not work with reservations. "But what do they do if they have no work?" she persisted. "They take care of the home and the children."
"But they weren't afraid they flew up that tree and hid, like schoolboys caught out of bounds not like shy girls." "And they ran like marathon winners you'll admit that, Terry," he added. Terry was moody as the days passed. He seemed to mind our confinement more than Jeff or I did; and he harped on Alima, and how near he'd come to catching her.
They must have a broader, richer, better 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.
I was taking a walk that night too, but I wasn't in his state of mind. To hear him rage you'd not have believed that he loved Alima at all you'd have thought that she was some quarry he was pursuing, something to catch and conquer. I think that, owing to all those differences I spoke of, they soon lost the common ground they had at first, and were unable to meet sanely and dispassionately.
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.
They broke and quarreled, over and over; he would rush off to console himself with some other fair one the other fair one would have none of him and he would drift back to Alima, becoming more and more devoted each time. She never gave an inch.
The women of Herland have no fear of men. Why should they have? They are not timid in any sense. They are not weak; and they all have strong trained athletic bodies. Othello could not have extinguished Alima with a pillow, as if she were a mouse.
Poor old Terry! The things he'd learned didn't help him a heap in Herland. His idea was to take he thought that was the way. He thought, he honestly believed, that women like it. Not the women of Herland! Not Alima! I can see her now one day in the very first week of their marriage, setting forth to her day's work with long determined strides and hard-set mouth, and sticking close to Ellador.
"She kicked me," confided the embittered prisoner he had to talk to someone. I believe Alima could have done it alone," he added with reluctant admiration. "She's as strong as a horse. And of course a man's helpless when you hit him like that. No woman with a shade of decency " I had to grin at that, and even Terry did, sourly.
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