Here everything was different. There was no sex-feeling to appeal to, or practically none. Two thousand years’ disuse had left very little of the instinct; also we must remember that those who had at times manifested it as atavistic exceptions were often, by that very fact, denied motherhood. Yet while the mother process remains, the inherent ground for sex-distinction remains also; and who shall say what long-forgotten feeling, vague and nameless, was stirred in some of these mother hearts by our arrival? What left us even more at sea in our approach was the lack of any sex-tradition. There was no accepted standard of what was “manly” and what was “womanly.” When Jeff said, taking the fruit basket from his adored one, “A woman should not carry anything,” Celis said, “Why?” with the frankest amazement. He could not look that fleet-footed, deep-chested young forester in the face and say, “Because she is weaker.” She wasn’t. One does not call a race horse weak because it is visibly not a cart horse. He said, rather lamely, that women were not built for heavy work. She looked out across the fields to where some women were working, building a new bit of wall out of large stones; looked back at the nearest town with its woman-built houses; down at the smooth, hard road we were walking on; and then at the little basket he had taken from her. “I don’t understand,” she said quite sweetly. “Are the women in your country so weak that they could not carry such a thing as that?” “It is a convention,” he said. “We assume that motherhood is a sufficient burden--that men should carry all the others.” “What a beautiful feeling!” she said, her blue eyes shining. “Does it work?” asked Alima, in her keen, swift way. “Do all men in all countries carry everything? Or is it only in yours?” “Don’t be so literal,” Terry begged lazily. “Why aren’t you willing to be worshipped and waited on? We like to do it.” “You don’t like to have us do it to you,” she answered. “That’s different,” he said, annoyed; and when she said, “Why is it?” he quite sulked, referring her to me, saying, “Van’s the philosopher.” Ellador and I talked it all out together, so that we had an easier experience of it when the real miracle time came. Also, between us, we made things clearer to Jeff and Celis. But Terry would not listen to reason. He was madly in love with Alima. He wanted to take her by storm, and nearly lost her forever.