his manner, that he expected her to pronounce against his
accepting my solicitation, and so terminate our interview pleasantly,
with the aid of the feminine social grace.

Mrs. Sandford, when she entered, certainly looked the very lady to
do the thing with gentle skill. She was handsome, with an animated
expression, dark-eyed, dark-haired, charming in her costume, a woman
of the smiling world, but maturely sincere and unaffected. I took a
somewhat distracted impression of her greeting, and heard him begin to
explain my proposal to her, as one hears a "silent partner" formally
consulted by a man who has already made up his mind. But when I glanced
at her, seated, her manner had changed. She was listening as if she were
used to being consulted and knew the responsibilities of decision. She
had the abstracted eye of impersonal consideration--silent--with now and
then a slow, meditative glance at me.

Her first question seemed merely femininely curious as to the domestic
aspects of polygamy. How did the women endure it?

I repeated a conversation I had once had with Frances Willard, who had
said: "The woman's heart must ache in polygamy." To which I had made the
obvious reply: "Don't women's hearts ache all over the world? Is there
any condition of society in which women do not bear more than an equal
share of the suffering?"

Mrs. Sandford asked me pointedly whether I was living in polygamy?

No, I was not.

Did I believe in it?

I believed that those did who practiced it.

Why didn't I practice it?

Those who practiced it believed that it had been authorized by a divine
revelation. I had not received such a revelation. I did not expect to.

Our talk warmed into a very intimate discussion of the lives of the
Mormon people, but I supposed that she was moved only by a curiosity
to which I was accustomed--a curiosity that was not necessarily
sympathetic--the curiosity one might have about the domestic life of
a Mohammedan. I took advantage of her curiosity to lead up to an
explanation of how the proscription of polygamy was driving young
Mormons into the practice, instead of frightening them from it. And so
I arrived at another recountal of the miserable condition of persecution
and suffering which I had come to ask her husband help us relieve; and
I made my appeal again, to them both, with something of despair, because
of my failure with him, and perhaps with greater effect because of my
despair. She listened th