"How charming to have the one nature dovetail into the other so neatly!" she exclaimed. "I seem to see a vision, shall I tell it to you,--a vision of your Earth? In the Beginning, you know that is the way in which all our traditions start out, there was a great heap of Qualities stacked in a pyramid upon the Earth. And the human creatures were requested to step up and help themselves to such as suited their tastes. There was a great scramble, and your sex, having some advantages in the way of muscle and limb,--and not having yet acquired the arts of courtesy and gallantry for which you are now so distinguished,--pressed forward and took first choice. Naturally you selected the things which were agreeable to possess in themselves, and the exercise of which would most redound to your glory; such virtues as chastity, temperance, patience, modesty, piety, and some minor graces, were thrust aside and eventually forced upon the weaker sex,--since it was necessary that all the Qualities should be used in order to make a complete Human Nature. Is not that a pretty fable?" She arose and shook out her draperies and spread her parasol. There were crimson spots in her cheeks, I felt that I had angered her,--and on the other hand, she had outraged my finest feelings. But we were both capable of self-government. "It must be near dinner time," she said, quietly. I walked along by her side in silence. As we again crossed the brooklet, she stooped and picked a long raceme of small white, delicately odorous flowers, and together we analyzed them, and I recognized them as belonging to our family of _convallaria majalis_. This led to a discussion of comparative botany on the two planets,--a safe, neutral topic. In outward appearance our mutual attitude was unchanged. Inwardly, there had been to me something like the moral upheaval of the universe. For the first time I had melancholy symptoms of nostalgia, and passionately regretted that I had ever exchanged the Earth for Mars. Severnius had returned. After dinner he invited me out onto the veranda to smoke a cigar,--he was very particular not to fill the house with tobacco smoke. Elodia, he said, did not like the odor. I wondered whether he took such pains out of consideration for her, or whether he simply dreaded her power to retaliate with her obnoxious vapor. The latter supposition, however, I immediately repudiated as being unjust to him; he was the gentlest and sweetest of men. My mind was so full of the subject Elodia and I had discussed that I could not forbear repeating my old question to him: "Tell me, my friend," I entreated, "do you in your inmost soul believe that men and women have one common nature,--that women are no better at all than men, and that men may, if they will, be as pure as--well as women ought to be?"