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But we could not get out, and we were being educated swiftly. Our special tutors rose rapidly in our esteem. They seemed of rather finer quality than the guards, though all were on terms of easy friendliness. Mine was named Somel, Jeff's Zava, and Terry's Moadine. We tried to generalize from the names, those of the guards, and of our three girls, but got nowhere.
"Do you find your physical variation accompanied by a proportionate variation in ideas, feelings, and products? Or, among people who look more alike, do you find their internal life and their work as similar?" We were rather doubtful on this point, and inclined to hold that there was more chance of improvement in greater physical variation. "It certainly should be," Zava admitted.
"What is 'the home'?" asked Somel a little wistfully. But Zava begged: "Tell me first, do NO women work, really?" "Why, yes," Terry admitted. "Some have to, of the poorer sort." "About how many in your country?" "About seven or eight million," said Jeff, as mischievous as ever. Comparisons Are Odious I had always been proud of my country, of course. Everyone is.
Jeff said he loved Zava like an aunt "only jollier than any aunt I ever saw"; Somel and I were as chummy as could be the best of friends; but it was funny to watch Terry and Moadine. She was patient with him, and courteous, but it was like the patience and courtesy of some great man, say a skilled, experienced diplomat, with a schoolgirl.
"Have you no kind of life where it is possible?" asked Zava. "Why, yes some low forms, of course." "How low or how high, rather?" "Well there are some rather high forms of insect life in which it occurs. Parthenogenesis, we call it that means virgin birth." She could not follow him. "BIRTH, we know, of course; but what is VIRGIN?"
"They bark if burglars try to get in." Then she made notes of "burglars" and went on: "because of the love which people bear to this animal." Zava interrupted here. "Is it the men or the women who love this animal so much?" "Both!" insisted Terry. "Equally?" she inquired. And Jeff said, "Nonsense, Terry you know men like dogs better than women do as a whole."
But when she spoke of our women someway I had a queer little indescribable feeling, not like any feeling I ever had before when "women" were mentioned. "Will you tell us how it came about?" Jeff pursued. "You said 'for two thousand years' did you have men here before that?" "Yes," answered Zava. They were all quiet for a little.
Somel and Zava and Moadine were on hand; we were thankful to have them, too they seemed almost like relatives. There was a splendid procession, wreathing dances, the new anthem I spoke of, and the whole great place pulsed with feeling the deep awe, the sweet hope, the wondering expectation of a new miracle. "There has been nothing like this in the country since our Motherhood began!"
They looked at one another and shook their heads a little, but Zava turned to Jeff and urged him to make us see said he seemed to understand more fully than we did. And he tried. I can see it now, or at least much more of it, but it has taken me a long time, and a good deal of honest intellectual effort.
To Celis they said nothing. She must not be in any way distressed, while the whole nation waited on her Great Work. Finally Jeff and I were called in. Somel and Zava were there, and Ellador, with many others that we knew. They had a great globe, quite fairly mapped out from the small section maps in that compendium of ours.
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