XV. But be this as it may, to woman the result was no less far-reaching and disastrous. She had become the property of one master, residing in her husband's tribe, which had no rights or duties in regard to her, where she was a stranger, perhaps speaking a different language. And her children kept her bound to this alien home in a much closer way than the husband could ever have been bound to her home under the earlier custom. Woman's early power rested in her organised position among her own kin: this was now lost. XVI. The change was not brought about quickly. For long the mother's influence persisted as a matter of habit. We have its rather empty shadow with us to-day. XVII. But, under the pressure of the new conditions, the old custom of tracing descent and the inheritance of property in the female line (so favourable to women) died. Mother-right passed away, remaining only as a tradition, or practised in isolated cases among primitive peoples. The patriarchal age, which still endures, succeeded. Women became slaves, who of old had been dominant. One final word more. The opinion that the subjection of women arose from male mastery, or was due to any special cruelty, must be set aside. To me the history of the mother-age does not teach this. I believe this charge could not have arisen, at all events it would not have persisted, if women, with the power they then enjoyed, had not desired the gaining of a closer relationship with the father of their children. With all the evils that father-right has brought to woman, we have got to remember that woman owes the individual relation of the man to herself and her children to the patriarchal system. The father's right in his children (which, unlike the right of the mother, was not founded on kinship, but rested on the quite different and insecure basis of property) had to be established. Without this being done, the family in its full and perfect development was impossible. We women need to remember this, lest bitterness stains our sense of justice. It may be that progress social and moral could not have been accomplished otherwise; that the cost of love's development has been the enslavement of woman. If so, then women will not, in the long account of Nature, have lost in the payment of the price. They may be (when they come at last to understand the truth) better fitted for their refound freedom.