We say, “Marriage is a lottery”; also “Marriages are made in Heaven”—but this is not so widely accepted as the other.  
We have a well-founded theory that it is best to marry “in one’s class,” and certain well-grounded suspicions of international marriages, which seem to persist in the interests of social progress, rather than in those of the contracting parties.
 
But no combination of alien races, of color, of caste, or , was ever so basically difficult to establish as that between us, three modern American men, and these three women of Herland.
 
It is all very well to say that we should have been frank about it beforehand. We had been frank. We had discussed—at least Ellador and I had—the conditions of The Great Adventure, and thought the path was clear before us. But there are some things one takes for granted, supposes are mutually understood, and to which both parties may repeatedly refer without ever meaning the same thing.
 
The differences in the education of the average man and woman are great enough, but the trouble they make is not mostly for the man; he generally carries out his own views of the case. The woman may have imagined the conditions of married life to be different; but what she imagined, was ignorant of, or might have preferred, did not seriously matter.
 
I can see clearly and speak calmly about this now, writing after a of years, years full of growth and education, but at the time it was rather hard sledding for all of us—especially for Terry. Poor Terry! You see, in any other imaginable marriage among the peoples of the earth, whether the woman were black, red, yellow, brown, or white; whether she were ignorant or educated, submissive or , she would have behind her the marriage tradition of our general history. This tradition relates the woman to the man. He goes on with his business, and she adapts herself to him and to it. Even in , by some strange hocus-pocus, that fact of birth and geography was waved aside, and the woman automatically acquired the nationality of her husband.
 
Well—here were we, three aliens in this land of women. It was small in area, and the external differences were not so great as to us. We did not yet appreciate the differences between the race-mind of this people and ours.
 
In the first place, they were a “pure stock” of two thousand uninterrupted years. Where we have some long connected lines of thought and feeling, together with a wide range of differences, often , these people were and firmly agreed on most of the basic principles of their life; and not only agreed in principle, but accustomed for these sixty-odd generations to act on those principles.
 
This is one thing which we did not understand—had made no allowance for. When in our pre-marital discussions one of those dear girls had said: “We understand it thus and thus,” or “We hold such and such to be true,” we men, in our own deep-seated convictions of the power of love, and our easy views about beliefs and principles, fondly imagined that we could convince them otherwise. What we imagined, before marriage, did not matter any more than what an average innocent young girl imagines. We found the facts to be different.
 
It was not that they did not love us; they did, deeply and warmly. But there are you again—what they meant by “love” and what we meant by “love” were so different.
 
Perhaps it seems rather cold-blooded to say “we” and “they,” as if we were not separate couples, with our separate joys and sorrows, but our positions as aliens drove us together constantly. The whole strange experience had made our friendship more close and intimate than it would ever have become in a free and easy lifetime among our own people. Also, as men, with our masculine tradition of far more than two thousand years, we were a unit, small but firm, against this far larger unit of feminine tradition.
 
I think I can make clear the points of difference without a too painful . The more external disagreement was in the matter of “the home,” and the housekeeping duties and pleasures we, by instinct and long education, supposed to be inherently appropriate to women.
 
I will give two illustrations, one away up, and the other away down, to show how completely disappointed we were in this regard.
 
For the lower one, try to imagine a male ant, coming from some state of existence where ants live in pairs, endeavoring to set up housekeeping with a female ant from a highly developed anthill. This female ant might regard him with intense personal affection, but her ideas of parentage and economic management would be on a very different scale from his. Now, of course, if she was a stray female in a country of pairing ants, he might have had his way with her; but if he was a stray male in an anthill—!
 
For the higher one, try to imagine a and impassioned man trying to set up housekeeping with a lady angel, a real wings-and-harp-and-halo angel, accustomed to fulfilling divine missions all over interstellar space. This angel might love the man with an affection quite beyond his power of return or even of , but her ideas of service and duty would be on a very different scale from his. Of course, if she was a stray angel in a country of men, he might have had his way with her; but if he was a stray man among angels—!
 
Terry, at his worst, in a black fury for which, as a man, I must have some sympathy, preferred the ant . More of Terry and his special troubles later. It was hard on Terry.
 
Jeff—well, Jeff always had a that was too good for this world! He’s the kind that would have made a saintly priest in parentagearlier times. He accepted the angel theory, swallowed it whole, tried to force it on us—with varying effect. He so worshipped Celis, and not only Celis, but what she represented; he had become so deeply convinced of the almost supernatural advantages of this country and people, that he took his medicine like a—I cannot say “like a man,” but more as if he wasn’t one.
 
Don’t misunderstand me for a moment. Dear old Jeff was no milksop or molly-coddle either. He was a strong, brave, efficient man, and an excellent fighter when fighting was necessary. But there was always this angel streak in him. It was rather a wonder, Terry being so different, that he really loved Jeff as he did; but it happens so sometimes, in spite of the difference—perhaps because of it.
 
As for me, I stood between. I was no such gay Lothario as Terry, and no such Galahad as Jeff. But for all my limitations I think I had the habit of using my brains in regard to behavior rather more frequently than either of them. I had to use brain-power now, I can tell you.
 
The big point at issue between us and our wives was, as may easily be imagined, in the very nature of the relation.
 
“Wives! Don’t talk to me about wives!” stormed Terry. “They don’t know what the word means.”
 
Which is exactly the fact—they didn’t. How could they? Back in their records of polygamy and slavery there were no ideals of wifehood as we know it, and since then no possibility of forming such.
 
“The only thing they can think of about a man is FATHERHOOD!” said Terry in high scorn. “FATHERHOOD! As if a man was always wanting to be a FATHER!”
 
This also was correct. They had their long, wide, deep, rich experience of Motherhood, and their only perception of the value of a male creature as such was for Fatherhood.
 
Aside from that, of course, was the whole range of personal love, love which as Jeff earnestly phrased it “passeth the love of women!” It did, too. I can give no idea—either now, after long and happy experience of it, or as it seemed then, in the first measureless wonder—of the beauty and power of the love they gave us.
 
Even Alima—who had a more stormy than either of the others, and who, heaven knows, had far more provocation—even Alima was patience and tenderness and wisdom personified to the man she loved, until he—but I haven’t got to that yet.
 
These, as Terry put it, “alleged or so-called wives” of ours, went right on with their profession as foresters. We, having no special learnings, had long since as assistants. We had to do something, if only to pass the time, and it had to be work—we couldn’t be playing forever.
 
This kept us out of doors with those dear girls, and more or less together—too much together sometimes.
 
These people had, it now became clear to us, the highest, keenest, most delicate sense of personal privacy, but not the faintest idea of that A DEUX we are so fond of. They had, every one of them, the “two rooms and a bath” theory realized. From earliest childhood each had a separate bedroom with toilet conveniences, and one of the marks of coming of age was the addition of an outer room in which to receive friends.
 
Long since we had been given our own two rooms apiece, and as being of a different sex and race, these were in a separate house. It seemed to be recognized that we should breathe easier if able to free our minds in real .
 
For food we either went to any convenient eating-house, ordered a meal brought in, or took it with us to the woods, always and equally good. All this we had become used to and enjoyed—in our courting days.
 
After marriage there arose in us a somewhat unexpected urge of feeling that called for a separate house; but this feeling found no response in the hearts of those fair ladies.
 
“We ARE alone, dear,” Ellador explained to me with gentle patience. “We are alone in these great forests; we may go and eat in any little summer-house—just we two, or have a separate table anywhere—or even have a separate meal in our own rooms. How could we be aloner?”
 
This was all very true. We had our pleasant solitude about our work, and our pleasant evening talks in their apartments or ours; we had, as it were, all the pleasures of courtship carried right on; but we had no sense of—perhaps it may be called possession.
 
“Might as well not be married at all,” Terry. “They only got up that ceremony to please us—please Jeff, mostly. They’ve no real idea of being married.”
 
I tried my best to get Ellador’s point of view, and naturally I tried to give her mine. Of course, what we, as men, wanted to make them see was that there were other, and as we proudly said “higher,” uses in this relation than what Terry called “ parentage.” In the highest terms I knew I tried to explain this to Ellador.
 
“Anything higher than for mutual love to hope to give life, as we did?” she said. “How is it higher?”
 
“It develops love,” I explained. “All the power of beautiful permanent mated love comes through this higher development.”
 
“Are you sure?” she asked gently. “How do you know that it was so developed? There are some birds who love each other so that they mope and pine if separated, and never pair again if one dies, but they never mate except in the mating season. Among your people do you find high and affection appearing in proportion to this indulgence?”
 
It is a very awkward thing, sometimes, to have a logical mind.
 
Of course I knew about those monogamous birds and beasts too, that mate for life and show every sign of mutual affection, without ever having stretched the sex relationship beyond its original range. But what of it?
 
“Those are lower forms of life!” I protested. “They have no capacity for faithful and affectionate, and happy—but oh, my dear! my dear!—what can they know of such a love as draws us together? Why, to touch you—to be near you—to come closer and closer—to lose myself in you—surely you feel it too, do you not?”
 
I came nearer. I seized her hands.
 
Her eyes were on mine, tender radiant, but steady and strong. There was something so powerful, so large and changeless, in those eyes that I could not sweep her off her feet by my own emotion as I had unconsciously assumed would be the case.
 
It made me feel as, one might imagine, a man might feel who loved a goddess—not a Venus, though! She did not resent my attitude, did not it, did not in the least fear it, evidently. There was not a shade of that timid or pretty resistance which are so—.
 
“You see, dearest,” she said, “you have to be patient with us. We are not like the women of your country. We are Mothers, and we are People, but we have not in this line.”
 
“We” and “we” and “we”—it was so hard to get her to be personal. And, as I thought that, I suddenly remembered how we were always criticizing OUR women for BEING so personal.
 
Then I did my earnest best to picture to her the sweet intense joy of married lovers, and the result in higher to all creative work.
 
“Do you mean,” she asked quite calmly, as if I was not holding her cool firm hands in my hot and rather quivering ones, “that with you, when people marry, they go right on doing this in season and out of season, with no thought of children at all?”
 
“They do,” I said, with some bitterness. “They are not mere parents. They are men and women, and they love each other.”
 
“How long?” asked Ellador, rather unexpectedly.
 
“How long?” I repeated, a little dashed. “Why as long as they live.”
 
“There is something very beautiful in the idea,” sh............