“How many children were born last year?” it occurred to me to ask. The answer was immediate, “_It was reported to the Council of Five that three boys had been born in the Great Nursery, and one in the Place of Renunciation._” “And how many girls?” I replied, in a natural supposition that this information was incomplete, but there was no answer. I then went back, querying from year to year, getting for each year a similar answer but with a total that increased as the years receded, and with a record of male births only, till, at ten years’ distance, the reply came-- _It was reported to the Council of Five that eight boys had been born in the Great Nursery, and twenty-four boys and one girl in the Place of Twilight._ I would have asked further, but my companion interposed with reason. “I think that we are learning little. If it can tell how long they live, and how many are their deaths, (for as they are born, I suppose that they may die also), we can then judge how numerous they may be, but from their births only we cannot.” This we tried, but only to be met again with silence, or with baffling answers. By persistence and variety in the form of queries we obtained allusion to “those of the Great Lethargy,” and to “The Desire of the Darkness,” but nothing more definite. In a final desperation I tried to obtain information by means of inquiry as to their customs of marriage, and at last obtained abstracts from the report of a very lengthy trial or debate, which threw a sombre and uncertain light upon the information which we had obtained already. Mainly, it consisted of a duel of argument between The First, who was evidently male, and whom we supposed to be the head of the Council of Five,--and the Elected One, who was a woman. It was evident from the moods of both that the matter with which they dealt was of a tragic and overwhelming importance, though there could hardly have been a greater contrast than was shown in the styles of their controversy. The thoughts of The First were slow, deliberate, weighty, solemn, yet with an extremity of urging which almost amounted to supplication. Those of the Elected One were swift, insistent, passionate, crowding thought on thought, in protest, defiance, and vindication. They were impatient with the intolerance of youth, and bold with the assurance of immortality. It appeared that the First One put forward a new method of life for the women of their kind, or for their descendants, pleading that its adoption was essential to the continuance of the race of the Dwellers. But with a fierce scorn she repelled it--“Do you think that women will consent to be as uncoloured and alike as men? Or that they will conceal themselves in dead hangings, as in some savage infancy of the world?”