And the abnormal, to which we are all so sadly well acclimated, she had never seen.
The two things she cared most to hear about, and wanted most to see, were these: the beautiful relation of marriage and the lovely women who were mothers and nothing else; beyond these her keen, active mind hungered eagerly for the world life.
"I'm almost as anxious to go as you are yourself," she insisted, "and you must be desperately homesick." I assured her that no one could be homesick in such a paradise as theirs, but she would have none of it.
"Oh, yes--I know.

It's like those little tropical islands you've told me about, shining like jewels in the big blue sea--I can't wait to see the sea! The little island may be as perfect as a garden, but you always want to get back to your own big country, don't you?
Even if it is bad in some ways ?" Ellador was more than willing.

But the nearer it came to our really going, and to my having to take her back to our "civilization," after the clean peace and beauty of theirs, the more I began to dread it, and the more I tried to explain.
Of course I had been homesick at first, while we were prisoners, before I had Ellador.

And of course I had, at first, rather idealized my country and its ways, in describing it.

Also, I had always accepted certain evils as integral parts of our civilization and never dwelt on them at all.