things are naturally worst among the chiefs and great people. I
remember when I was stopping among the Ot Danoms of Borneo, the
daughters of chiefs and great sun-descended families were shut up
at eight or ten years old, in a little cell or room, as a religious
duty, and cut off from all intercourse with the outside world for
many years together. The cell's dimly lit by a single small window,
placed high in the wall, so that the unhappy girl never sees
anybody or anything, but passes her life in almost total darkness.
She mayn't leave the room on any pretext whatever, not even for the
most pressing and necessary purposes. None of her family may see
her face; but a single slave woman's appointed to accompany her and
wait upon her. Long want of exercise stunts her bodily growth, and
when at last she becomes a woman, and emerges from her prison, her
complexion has grown wan and pale and waxlike. They take her out in
solemn guise and show her the sun, the sky, the land, the water,
the trees, the flowers, and tell her all their names, as if to a
newborn creature. Then a great feast is made, a poor crouching
slave is killed with a blow of the sword, and the girl is solemnly
smeared with his reeking blood, by way of initiation. But this is
only done, of course, with the daughters of wealthy and powerful
families. And I find it pretty much the same in England. In all
these matters, your poorer classes are relatively pure and simple
and natural. It's your richer and worse and more selfish classes
among whom sex-taboos are strongest and most unnatural."

Frida looked up at him a little pleadingly.

"Do you know, Mr. Ingledew," she said, in a trembling voice, "I'm
sure you don't mean it for intentional rudeness, but it sounds to
us very like it, when you speak of our taboos and compare us openly