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These casual comments did not seem to arouse any burning curiosity
among the young men, and up to the day of Kalora's nineteenth
anniversary they had not had the effect of bringing to the father any of
those guarded inquiries which, under the oriental custom, are always
preliminary to an actual proposal of marriage.

Count Selim Malagaski had a double reason for wishing to see Kalora
married. While she remained at home he knew that he would be second in
authority. There is an occidental misapprehension to the effect that
every woman beyond the borders of the Levant is a languorous and waxen
lily, floating in a milk-warm pool of idleness. It is true that the
women of a household live in certain apartments set aside as a "harem."
But "harem" literally means "forbidden"--that is, forbidden to the
public, nothing more. Every villa at Newport has a "harem."

The women of Morovenia do not pour tea for men every afternoon, and they
are kept well under cover, but they are not slaves. They do not inherit
a nominal authority, but very often they assume a real authority. In the
United States, women can not sail a boat, and yet they direct the cruise
of the yacht. Railway presidents can not vote in the Senate, and yet
they always know how the votes are going to be cast. And in Morovenia,
many a clever woman, deprived of specified and legal rights, has learned
to rule man by those tactful methods which are in such general use that
they need not be specified in this connection.

Kalora had a way of getting around her father. After she had defied him
and put him into a stewing rage, she would smooth him the right way
and, with teasing little cajoleries, nurse him back to a pleasant humor.