“It is this careful choice according to types which has provided this city with dwarfs and giants, and with workers of all kinds, with aptitudes for peculiar forms of art or science. Thou hast seen for thyself the results of the wisdom of the first Thoth. But as regards the rulers, he was determined that he would, in the course of time, utterly stamp out the love of woman, and replace it with loathing and disgust. To this end he himself treated the woman who had changed his love into hatred with the utmost cruelty and contempt. At the same time, in order to render her offspring healthy and intelligent, he compelled her to labour both with mind and body, and to live so as to unfold her utmost powers. How meet she was to be the mother of a race of kings thou canst judge thyself, if thou hast not yet forgotten the statue which was her image. Her sons were taught from their infancy to loathe their mother, and to regard their sisters as necessary evils. “It would only be painful and useless were I to tell thee more in detail; suffice it to say that in the building of the women thou hast seen the natural result of this policy, acted upon for many hundred years. Our women of the race of rulers are simply intended to be mothers of particular kinds of men, and in the course of generations the men of this race have succeeded in acquiring for women a natural hatred and loathing. “Now thou canst understand why it was my fellows—who were also of the rulers, though inferior to me—treated thee and thy companions with such contempt, and also thou canst to some extent explain the mystery of the women whom I showed to thee. Thou seest only the will of the first Thoth manifested through his descendants. Two principles he has planted in all his people—perfect obedience to his vice-regent, for we say that our king is not dead but asleep, and love of knowledge and of toil. Thus in all and in us of the ruling race, our strongest passion is hatred and contempt for women.” As he ended his narration Daphne shuddered, for she thought she read in his eyes signs of lust depraved by malignant cruelty, and that he regarded her with all the loathing he had just described. Then she reflected on her helpless condition and on the misery she had witnessed, and swiftly determined to seek a refuge in death. Already with this notion in her mind she had provided herself with a dagger, and with a trembling hand she seized it. Then she raised her courage, and looking Thoth steadfastly in the face, she cried— “I at least will never be degraded, and thus I escape from thy snare.” She raised the knife, and was about to plunge it into her heart when Thoth seized her arm, and said— “Stay thy hand,—thou hast heard but half the story. Dost thou not wonder why, hating women as we do, and being most strict in keeping our race pure, we have notwithstanding sought to bring strange women from beyond the sea, and that we have paid them honour—I at least to thee,—thou dost not doubt that?”