“For a week or for a year?” said Acquilla, smiling. “As a woman, any time!” I said insistently and the desire to avenge myself on the humiliation of my sex was so strong, that I threw into my voice, my look and the touch of my hand, all the animal magnetism that my male instinct could summon. Acquilla’s glance unlike Dianne’s, never fell. On the contrary, a quick feline light gleamed in her eyes as she looked at me. “You, of course,” she said tensely, to my dismay. “Being what I am, you on your own terms, you all my life! And just as frankly, dear man, if it were a question of a hundred men like you to be let loose among our society, I should cast my vote at once for extermination.” A shudder passed over me. To be loved by Acquilla, was like being loved by a coldly reasoning tigress. I regretted instantly the dangerous provocation I had given and uneasily changed the subject. “Now that I am reconciled to realities,” I said, with a touch of sarcasm, “I am anxious to understand more fully your customs. What is the object of this parade?” “What was the object of the introduction of your daughters to society?” replied Acquilla. “Daughters to marry--men to mate! The principle is the same, only I think we are franker, because we have done away with inhibitions. Those you see with the white plumed fans are the debutants of the first year. They do not mate immediately with the maidens of their age, but are apprenticed to the Histriones for their sentimental education. Those with the scarlet fans are of the second year.” “Yes, they have a look of men of the world,” I said with a sarcasm that was of course, lost on Acquilla. At this moment, there was a perceptible stir of curiosity among the languidly circulating males, a sudden chime of bells in the air and the irruption of hundreds of young maidens, which I can only describe as the scrambling rush of the stags at a ball. These young Dianas, dressed in short tunics that stopped short of the knee, advanced eagerly and posting themselves at points of vantage, stared appraisingly at the fluttering males, with a boldness that Don Juan himself might have envied. The debutants of the first year, I observed, pretended an indifference which their furtive glances belied, as they endeavored by careless and seemingly haphazard meetings to attract their attention. But the superior Dianas (I had almost written “the young bucks,” so completely did their impertinent inspection suggest the manners of the highborn oglers of other days) indifferent to these timorous advances, had eyes only for their more experienced brothers. The white fans, as though conscious of their inferiority, gradually drifted away to the grove of the Histriones. I beheld then, the curious sight of hundreds of couples moving languidly with the woman’s arms around the man, her head bent in solicitous courtship. “Are these women virgins?” I asked.