You see, if a man loves a girl who is in the first place young and inexperienced; who in the second place is educated with a background of caveman tradition, a middle-ground of poetry and romance, and a foreground of unspoken hope and interest all centering upon the one Event; and who has, furthermore, absolutely no other hope or interest worthy of the name--why, it is a comparatively easy matter to sweep her off her feet with a dashing attack. Terry was a past master in this process. He tried it here, and Alima was so affronted, so repelled, that it was weeks before he got near enough to try again. The more coldly she denied him, the hotter his determination; he was not used to real refusal. The approach of flattery she dismissed with laughter, gifts and such “attentions” we could not bring to bear, pathos and complaint of cruelty stirred only a reasoning inquiry. It took Terry a long time. I doubt if she ever accepted her strange lover as fully as did Celis and Ellador theirs. He had hurt and offended her too often; there were reservations. But I think Alima retained some faint vestige of long-descended feeling which made Terry more possible to her than to others; and that she had made up her mind to the experiment and hated to renounce it. However it came about, we all three at length achieved full understanding, and solemnly faced what was to them a step of measureless importance, a grave question as well as a great happiness; to us a strange, new joy. Of marriage as a ceremony they knew nothing. Jeff was for bringing them to our country for the religious and the civil ceremony, but neither Celis nor the others would consent. “We can’t expect them to want to go with us--yet,” said Terry sagely. “Wait a bit, boys. We’ve got to take ’em on their own terms--if at all.” This, in rueful reminiscence of his repeated failures. “But our time’s coming,” he added cheerfully. “These women have never been mastered, you see--” This, as one who had made a discovery. “You’d better not try to do any mastering if you value your chances,” I told him seriously; but he only laughed, and said, “Every man to his trade!” We couldn’t do anything with him. He had to take his own medicine. If the lack of tradition of courtship left us much at sea in our wooing, we found ourselves still more bewildered by lack of tradition of matrimony. And here again, I have to draw on later experience, and as deep an acquaintance with their culture as I could achieve, to explain the gulfs of difference between us. Two thousand years of one continuous culture with no men. Back of that, only traditions of the harem. They had no exact analogue for our word _home_, any more than they had for our Roman-based _family_. They loved one another with a practically universal affection, rising to exquisite and unbroken friendships, and broadening to a devotion to their country and people for which our word _patriotism_ is no definition at all.