“It behoveth us also to consider the nature of him that offendeth.”

SENECA.

The longer I delayed my visit to Caskia, the more difficult it became for me to tear myself away from Thursia. You may guess the lodestar that held me back. It was as if I were attached to Elodia by an invisible chain which, alas! in no way hindered her free movements, because she was unconscious of its existence. Sometimes she treated me with a charmingly frank camaraderie, and at other times her manner was simply, almost coldly, courteous, — which I very well knew to be due to the fact that she was more than usually absorbed in her business or official affairs; she was never cold for a purpose, any more than she was fascinating for a purpose. She was singularly sincere, affecting neither smiles nor frowns, neither affability nor severity, from remote or calculating motives. In brief, she did not employ her feminine graces, her sex-power, as speculating capital in social commerce. The social conditions in Thursia do not demand that women shall pose in a conciliatory attitude toward men — upon whose favor their dearest privileges hang. Marriage not being an economic necessity with them, they are released from certain sordid motives which often actuate women in our world in their frantic efforts to avert the appalling catastrophe of missing a husband; and they are at liberty to operate their matrimonial campaigns upon other grounds. I do not say higher grounds, because that I do not know. I only know that one base factor in the marriage problem, — the ignoble scheming to secure the means of living, as represented in a husband, — is eliminated, and the spirit of woman is that much more free.

We men have a feeling that we are liable at any time to be entrapped into matrimony by a mask of cunning and deceit, which heredity and long practice enable women to use with such amazing skill that few can escape it. We expect to be caught with chaff, like fractious colts coquetting with the halter and secretly not unwilling to be caught.

Another thing: woman’s freedom to propose — which struck me as monstrous — takes away the reproach of her remaining single; the supposition being, as in the case of a bachelor, that it is a matter of choice with her. It saves her the dread of having it said that she has never had an opportunity to marry.

Courtship in Thursia may lack some of the tantalizing uncertainties which give it zest with us, but marriage also is robbed of many doubts and misgivings. Still I could not accustom myself with any feeling of comfort to the situation there, — the idea of masculine pre-eminence and womanly dependence being too thoroughly ingrained in my nature.

Elodia, of course, did many things and held many opinions of which I did not approve. But I believed in her innate nobility, and attributed her defects to a pernicious civilization and a government which did not exercise its paternal right to cherish, and restrain, and protect, the weaker sex, as they should be cherished, and restrained, and protected. And how charming and how reliable she was, in spite of her defects! She had an atomic weight upon which you could depend as upon any other known quantity. Her presence was a stimulus that quickened the faculties and intensified the emotions. At least I may speak for myself; she awoke new feelings and aroused new powers within me.

Her life had made her practical but not prosaic. She had imagination and poetic feeling; there were times when her beautiful countenance was touched with the grandeur of lofty thought, and again with the shifting lights of a playful humor, or the flashings of a keen but kindly wit. She had a laugh that mellowed the heart, as if she took you into her confidence. It is a mark of extreme favor when your superior, or a beautiful woman, admits you to the intimacy of a cordial laugh! Even her smiles, which I used to lie in wait for and often tried to provoke, were not the mere froth of a light and careless temperament; they had a significance like speech. Though she was so busy, and though she knew so well how to make the moments count, she could be idle when she chose, deliciously, luxuriously idle, — like one who will not fritter away his pence, but upon occasion spends his guineas handsomely. At the dinner hour she always gave us of her best. Her varied life supplies her with much material for conversation, — nothing worth noticing ever escaped her, in the life and conduct of people about her. She was fond of anecdote, and could garnish the simplest story with an exquisite grace.

Upon one of her idle days, — a day when Severnius happened not to be at home, — she took up her parasol in the hall after we had had luncheon, and gave me a glance which said, “Come with me if you like,” and we went out and strolled through the grounds together. Her manner had not a touch of coquetry; I might have been simply another woman, she might have been simply another man. But I was so stupid as to essay little gallantries, such as had been, in fact, a part of my youthful education; she either did not observe them or ignored them, I could not tell which. Once I put out my hand to assist her over a ridiculously narrow streamlet, and she paid no heed to the gesture, but reefed her skirts, or draperies, with her own unoccupied hand and stepped lightly across. Again, when we were about to ascend an abrupt hill, I courteously offered her my arm.

“O, no, I thank you!” she said; “I have two, which balance me very well when I climb.”

“You are a strange woman,” I exclaimed with a blush.

“Am I?” she said, lifting her brows. “Well, I suppose — or rather you suppose — that I am the product of my ancestry and my training.”

“You are, in some respects,” I assented; and then I added, “I have often tried to fancy what effect our civilization would have had upon you.”

“What effect do you think it would have had?” she asked, with quite an unusual — I might say earthly — curiosity.

“I dare not tell you,” I replied, thrilling with the felicity of a talk so personal, — the first I had ever had with her.

“Why not?” she demanded, with a side glance at me from under her gold-fringed shade.

“It would be taking too great a liberty.”

“But if I pardon that?” There was an archness in her smile which was altogether womanly. What a grand opportunity, I thought, for saying some of the things I had so often wanted to say to her! But I hesitated, turning hot and then cold.

“Really,” I said, “I cannot. I should flatter you, and you would not like that.”

For the first time, I saw her face crimson to the temples.

“That would be very bad taste,” she replied; “flattery being the last resort — when it is found that there is nothing in one to compliment. Silence is better; you have commendable tact.”

“Pardon my stupid blunder!” I cried; “you cannot think I meant that! Flattery is exaggerated, absurd, unmeaning praise, and no praise, the highest, the best, could do you justice, could — ”

She broke in with a disdainful laugh:

“A woman can always compel a pretty speech from a man, you see, — even in Mars!”

“You did not compel it,” I rejoined earnestly, “if I but dared, — if you would allow me to tell you what I think of you, how highly I regard — ”

She made a gesture which cut short my eloquence, and we walked on in silence.

Whenever there has been a disturbance in the moral atmosphere, there is nothing like silence to restore the equilibrium. I, watching furtively, saw the slight cloud pass from her face, leaving the intelligent serenity it usually wore. But still she did not speak. However, there was nothing ominous in that, she was never troubled with an uneasy desire to keep conversation going.

On top of the hill there were benches, and we sat down. It was one of those still afternoons in summer when nature seems to be taking a siesta. Overhead it was like the heart of a rose. The soft, white, cottony clouds we often see suspended in our azure ether, floated — as soft, as white, as fleecy — in the pink skies of Mars.

Elodia closed her parasol and laid it across her lap and leaned her head back against the tree in whose shade we were. It was an acute pleasure, a rapture indeed, to sit so near to her and alone with her, out of hearing of all the world. But she was calmly unconscious, her gaze wandering dreamily through half-shut lids over the wide landscape, which included forests and fields and meadows, and many windings of the river, for we had a high point of observation.

I presently broke the silence with a bold, perhaps an inexcusable question,

“Elodia, do you intend ever to marry?”

It was a kind of challenge, and I held myself rigid, waiting for her answer, which did not come immediately. She turned her eyes toward me slowly without moving her head, and our glances met and gradually retreated, as two opposing forces might meet and retreat, neither conquering, neither vanquished. Hers went back into space, and she replied at last as if to space, — as if the question had come, not from me alone, but from all the voices that urge to matrimony.

“Why should I marry?”

“Because you are a woman,” I answered promptly.

“Ah!” her lip curled with a faint smile, “your reason is very general, but why limit it at all, why not say because I am one of a pair which should be joined together?”

The question was not cynical, but serious; I scrutinized her face closely to make sure of that before answering.

“I know,” I replied, “that here in Mars there is held to be no difference in the nature and requirements of the sexes, but it is a false hypothesis, there is a difference, — a vast difference! all my knowledge of humanity, my experience and observation, prove it.”

“Prove it to you, no doubt,” she returned, “but not to me, because my experience and observation have been the reverse of yours. Will you kindly tell me,” she added, “why you think I should wish to marry any more than a man, — or what reasons can be urged upon a woman more than upon a man?”

An overpowering sense of helplessness fell upon me, — as when one has reached the limits of another’s understanding and is unable to clear the ground for further argument.

“O, Elodia! I cannot talk to you,” I replied. “It is true, as you say, that our conclusions are based upon diverse premises; we are so wide apart in our views on this subject that what I would say must seem to you the merest cant and sentiment.”

“I think not; you are an honest man,” she rejoined with an encouraging smile, “and I am greatly interested in your philosophy of marriage.”

I acknowledged her compliment.

“Well,” I began desperately, letting the words tumble out as they would, “it is woman’s nature, as I understand it, to care a great deal about being loved, — loved wholly and entirely by one man who is worthy of her love, and to be united to him in the sacred bonds of marriage. To have a husband, children; to assume the sweet obligations of family ties, and to gather to herself the tenderest and purest affections humanity can know, is surely, indisputably, the best, the highest, noblest, province of woman.”

“And not of man?”

“These things mean the same to men, of course,” I replied, “though in lesser degree. It is man’s office — with us — to buffet with the world, to wrest the means of livelihood, of comfort, luxury, from the grudging hand of fortune. It is the highest grace of woman that she accepts these things at his hands, she honors him in accepting, as he honors her in bestowing.”

I was aware that I was indulging in platitudes, but the platitudes of Earth are novelties in Mars.

Her eyes took a long leap from mine to the vague horizon line. “It is very strange,” she said, “this distinction you make, I cannot understand it at all. It seems to me that this love we are talking about is simply one of the strong instincts implanted in our common nature. It is an essential of our being. Marriage is not, it is a social institution; and just why it is incumbent upon one sex more than upon the other, or why it is more desirable for one sex than the other, is inconceivable to me. If either a man, or a woman, desires the ties you speak of, or if one has the vanity to wish to found a respectable family, then, of course, marriage is a necessity, — made so by our social and political laws. It is a luxury we may have if we pay the price.”

I was shocked at this cold-blooded reasoning, and cried, “O, how can a woman say that! have you no tenderness, Elodia? no heart-need of these ties and affections, — which I have always been taught are so precious to woman?”

She shrugged her shoulders, and, leaning forward a little, clasped her hands about her knees.

“Let us not make it personal,” she said; “I admitted that these things belong to our common nature, and I do not of course except myself. But I repeat that marriage is a convention, and — I am not conventional.”

“As to that,” I retorted, “all the things that pertain to civilization, all the steps which have ever been taken in the direction of progress, are conventions: our clothing, our houses, our religions, arts, our good manners. And we are bound to accept every ‘convention’ that makes for the betterment of society, as though it were a revelation from God.”

I confess that this thought was the fruit of my brief intercourse with the Caskians, who hold that there is a divine power continually operating upon human consciousness, — not disclosing miracles, but enlarging and perfecting human perceptions. I was thinking of this when Elodia suddenly put the question to me:

“Are you married?”

“No, I am not,” I replied. The inquiry was not agreeable to me; it implied that she had been hitherto altogether too indifferent as to my “eligibility," — never having concerned herself to ascertain the fact before.

“Well, you are perhaps older than I am,” she said, “and you have doubtless had amours?”

I was as much astounded by the frankness of this inquiry as you can be, and blushed like a girl. She withdrew her eyes from my face with a faint smile and covered the question by another:

“You intend to marry, I suppose?”

“I do, certainly,” I replied, the resolution crystallizing on the instant.

She drew a long sigh. “Well, I do not, I am so comfortable as I am.” She patted the ground with her slipper toe. “I do not wish to impose new conditions upon myself. I simply accept my life as it comes to me. Why should I voluntarily burden myself with a family, and all the possible cares and sorrows which attend the marriage state! If I cast a prophetic eye into the future, what am I likely to see? — Let us say, a lovely daughter dying of some frightful malady; an idolized son squandering my wealth and going to ruin; a husband in whom I no longer delight, but to whom I am bound by a hundred intricate ties impossible to sever. I think I am not prepared to take the future on trust to so great an extent! Why should the free wish for fetters? Affection and sympathy are good things, indispensable things in fact, — but I find them in my friends. And for this other matter: this need of love, passion, sentiment, — which is peculiarly ephemeral in its impulses, notwithstanding that it has such an insistent vitality in the human heart, — may be satisfied without entailing such tremendous responsibilities.”

I looked at her aghast; did she know what she was saying; did she mean what her words implied?

“You wrong yourself, Elodia,” said I; “those are the sentiments, the arguments, of a selfish person, of a mean and cowardly spirit. And you have none of those attributes; you are strong, courageous, generous

“You mistake me,” she interrupted, “I am entirely selfish; I do not wish to disturb my present agreeable pose. Tell me, what is it that usually prompts people to marry?”

“Why, love, of course,” I answered.

“Well, you are liable to fall in love with my maid — ”

“Not after having seen her mistress!” I ejaculated.

“If she happens to possess a face or figure that draws your masculine eye,” she went on, the rising color in her cheek responding to my audacious compliment; “though there may be nothing in common between you, socially, intellectually, or spiritually. What would be the result of such a marriage, based upon simple sex-love?”

I had known many such marr............