"Indeed no!" I replied, the masculine instinct of superiority swelling within me. Severnius wears spectacles. He adjusted them carefully on his nose and looked at me. "But did you not tell me just now that your country is a republic?" "It is, but we do not hold that women are our political equals," I answered. His face was an exclamation and interrogation point fused into one. "Indeed! and how do you manage it,--how, for instance, can you prevent them from voting?" "O, they don't often try it," I said, laughing. "When they do, we simply throw their ballots out of the count." "Is it possible! That seems to me a great unfairness. However, it can be accounted for, I suppose, from the fact that things are so different on the Earth to what they are here. Our government, you see, rests upon a system of taxation. We tax all property to defray governmental expenses, and for many other purposes tending toward the general good; which makes it necessary that all our citizens shall have a voice in our political economy. But you say your women have no property, and so--" "I beg your pardon!" I interposed; "I did not say that. We have a great many very rich women,--women whose husbands or fathers have left them fortunes." "Then they of course have a vote?" "They do not. You can't make a distinction like that." "No? But you exempt their property, perhaps?" "Of course not." "Do you tell me that you tax property, to whatever amount, and for whatever purpose, you choose, without allowing the owner her fractional right to decide about either the one or the other?" "Their interests are identical with ours," I replied, "so what is the difference? We men manage the government business, and I fancy we do it sufficiently well." I expanded my chest after this remark, and Severnius simply looked at me. I think that at that moment I suffered vicariously in his scornful regard for all my countrymen. I did not like the Socratic method he had adopted in this conversation, and I turned the tables on him. "Do your women hold office, other than in the school board and the council?" I asked. "O, yes, fully half our offices are filled by women." "And you make no discrimination in the kind of office?" "The law makes none; those things adjust themselves. Fitness, equipment, are the only things considered. A woman, the same as a man, is governed by her taste and inclination in the matter of office-holding. Do women never take a hand in state affairs on the Earth?" "Yes, in some countries they do,--monarchies. There have been a good many women sovereigns. There are a few now." "And are they successful rulers?" "Some are, some are not." "The same as men. That proves that your women are not really inferior." "Well, I should say not!" I retorted. "Our women are very superior; we treat them more as princesses than as inferiors,--they are angels." I was carried away in the heat of resentment, and knew that what I had said was half cant.