spread like a model of heaven below us, and the cities, the vil- lages—how well I remembered them, in their scattered loveli- ness, rich in color, beautiful in design, everywhere fringed and shaded by dean trees, lit and cheered by bright water, radiant with flowers.
She leaned forward like a young mother over her sleeping child, tender, proud, gloating.
"No smoke!" she murmured; "no brutal noise, no wickedness, no disease. Almost no accidents or sickness—almost none." (This in a whisper, as if she were apologizing for some faint blemish on the child.)
"Beauty!" she breathed. "Beauty! Beauty!—everywhere. Oh, I had forgotten how beautiful it was'"
So had I. When I first saw it I was still too accustomed to our common ugliness to really appreciate this loveliness.
When we had swung back to the town where we had lived most, and made our smooth descent in a daisied meadow, there were many to meet us, with my Well-remembered Somel, and, first and most eager, Jeff and Celis, with their baby.
Ellador seized upon it as eagerly as her gentle tenderness would allow, with reverent kisses for the little hands, the rosy feet. She caught Celis to her arms and held her close. She even kissed Jeff, which he apparently liked, and nobody else minded. And then—well, if you live in a country of about three million inhabitants, and love them all; if you have been an envoy ex- traordinary—very extraordinary, indeed — to a far-off, un- known world, and have come back unexpectedly—why, your hands are pretty full for a while.
* * * * * * * *
We settled back into the smooth-running Herland life without a ripple. No trouble about housing; they had always a certain percentage of vacancies, to allow for freedom of movement. No trouble about clothes; those perfect garments were to be had everywhere, always lovely and suitable. No trouble about food; that smooth, well-adjusted food supply was available wherever we went.
No appeals for deserving charity—no need of them. Nothing to annoy and depress, everything to give comfort and strength; and under all, more perceptible to me now than before, that vast, steady, onmoving current of definite purpose, planning and working to make good better and better best.
The "atmosphere" in the world behind us is that of a thou- sand mixed currents, pushing and pulling in every direction, controverting and opposing one another.
Here was peace—and power, with accomplishment.
Eagerly she returned to her people. With passionate enthusi- asm she poured out, in wide tours of lecturing, and in print, her report of world conditions. She saw it taken up, studied, discussed by those great-minded over-mothers of the land. She saw the young women, earnest eyed, of boundless hope and high purpose, planning, as eager missionaries plan, what they could do to spread to all the world their proven gains. Reprints of that encyclopaedia were scattered to every corner of the land, and read swiftly, eagerly, to crowding groups of listeners. There began to stir in Herland a new spirit, pushing, seeking, a new sense of responsibility, a larger duty.
"It is not enough," they said, "that we should be so happy. Here is the whole round world—millions and hundreds of mil- lions of people—and all their babies! Not in a thousand years will we rest, till the world is happy!"
And to this end they began to plan, slowly, wisely, calmly, making no haste; sure, above all, that they must preserve their own integrity and peace if they were to help others.
* * * * * * * *
When Ellador had done her utmost, given all that she had gathered and seen the great work growing, she turned to me with a long, happy sigh.
"Let's go to the forest," she said. And we went.
We went to the rock where I had first landed and she showed me where three laughing girls had been hidden. We went to the tree where they had slipped away like quicksilver. We went to a far-off, quiet place she knew, a place of huge trees, heavy with good fruit, of smooth, mossy banks, of quiet pools and tinkling fountains. Here, unexpected, was a little forester house, still and clean, with tall flowers looking in at the windows.
"I used to love this best of all," she said. "Look—you can see both ways."
It was on a high knoll and, through the great boughs, a long vista opened to a bright sunlight in the fields below.
The other side was a surprise. The land dropped suddenly, fell to a rocky brink and ended. Dark and mysterious, far bey- ond, in a horizon-sweeping gloom of crowding jungle, lay—the world.
"I always wanted to see—to know—to help," she said. "Dear—you have brought me so much! Not only love, but the great new spread of life—of work to do for all humanity.
"And then—the other new Hope, too, —perhaps—perhaps—a son !"
And in due time a son was born to us.
The End
