“But why is it?” Corliss queried.

“I do not know why.  I only know that it is.  I simply bear witness.  I do know that we do what they cannot do, and what they can do, we do better.”

Frona nodded her head triumphantly at Corliss.  “Come, acknowledge your defeat, so that we may go in to dinner.  Defeat for the time being, at least.  The concrete facts of paddles and pack-straps quite overcome your dogmatics.  Ah, I thought so.  More time?  All the time in the world.  But let us go in.  We’ll see what my father thinks of it,—­and Mr. Kellar.  A symposium on Anglo-Saxon supremacy!”

Frost and enervation are mutually repellant.  The Northland gives a keenness and zest to the blood which cannot be obtained in warmer climes.  Naturally so, then, the friendship which sprang up between Corliss and Frona was anything but languid.  They met often under her father’s roof-tree, and went many places together.  Each found a pleasurable attraction in the other, and a satisfaction which the things they were not in accord with could not mar.  Frona liked the man because he was a man.  In her wildest flights she could never imagine linking herself with any man, no matter how exalted spiritually, who was not a man physically.  It was a delight to her and a joy to look upon the strong males of her kind, with bodies comely in the sight of God and muscles swelling with the promise of deeds and work.  Man, to her, was preeminently a fighter.  She believed in natural selection and in sexual selection, and was certain that if man had thereby become possessed of faculties and functions, they were for him to use and could but tend to his good.  And likewise with instincts.  If she felt drawn to any person or thing, it was good for her to be so drawn, good for herself.  If she felt impelled to joy in a well-built frame and well-shaped muscle, why should she restrain?  Why should she not love the body, and without shame?  The history of the race, and of all races, sealed her choice with approval.  Down all time, the weak and effeminate males had vanished from the world-stage.  Only the strong could inherit the earth.  She had been born of the strong, and she chose to cast her lot with the strong.

Yet of all creatures, she was the last to be deaf and blind to the things of the spirit.  But the things of the spirit she demanded should be likewise strong.  No halting, no stuttered utterance, tremulous waiting, minor wailing!  The mind and the soul must be as quick and definite and certain as the body.  Nor was the spirit made alone for immortal dreaming.  Like the flesh, it must strive and toil.  It must be workaday as well as idle day.  She could understand a weakling singing sweetly and even greatly, and in so far she could love him for his sweetness and greatness; but her love would have fuller measure were he strong of body as well.  She believed she was just.  She gave the flesh its due and the spirit its due; but she had, over and above, her own choice, her own individual ideal.  She liked to see the two go hand in hand.  Prophecy and dyspepsia did not affect her as a felicitous admixture.  A splendid savage and a weak-kneed poet!  She could admire the one for his brawn and the other for his song; but she would prefer that they had been made one in the beginning.