“What exquisite delicacy!” was her consolatory comment.  “Well, well, this is the golden age, truly.”

When further informed that in marriage among the Moquis it is woman who takes the initiative, the girl pointing out the young man of her heart and the girl’s father making the offer, which is never refused, Mrs. Stanley almost shed tears of gratification.  Here was something like woman’s rights; here was a flash of the glorious dawn of equality between the sexes; for when she talked of equality she meant female preeminence.

“And divorces?” she eagerly asked.

“They are at the pleasure of the parties,” explained Thurstane, who had been catechising the chief at great length through his Navajo.

“And who, in case of a divorce, cares for the children?”

“The grandparents.”

Aunt Maria came near clapping her hands.  This was better than Connecticut or Indiana.  A woman here might successively marry all the men whom she might successively fancy, and thus enjoy a perpetual gush of the affections and an unruffled current of happiness.

To such extreme views had this excellent creature been led by brooding over what she called the wrongs of her sex and the legal tyranny of the other.

But we must return to Coronado and Clara.  The man had come up to the pueblo on purpose to have a plain talk with the girl and learn exactly what she meant to do with him.  It was now more than a week since he had offered himself, and in that time she had made no sign which indicated her purpose.  He had looked at her and sighed at her without getting a response of any sort.  This could not go on; he must know how she felt towards him; he must know how much, she cared for Thurstane.  How else could he decide what to do with her and with him?

Thus, while the other members of the party were watching the Moqui dances, Coronado and Clara were talking matters of the heart, and were deciding, unawares to her, questions of life and death.

CHAPTER XVI.

It must be remembered that when Mrs. Stanley carried off skipper Glover to help her investigate the religion of the Moquis, she left Coronado alone with Clara in one of the interior rooms of the chief’s house.

Thurstane, to be sure, was in the next room and in sight; but he had with him the chief, two other leading Moquis, and his chance Navajo interpreter; they were making a map of the San Juan country by scratching with an arrow-point on the clay floor; everybody was interested in the matter, and there was a pretty smart jabbering.  Thus Coronado could say his say without being overheard or interrupted.

For a little while he babbled commonplaces.  The truth is that the sight of the girl had unsettled his resolutions a little.  While he was away from her, he could figure to himself how he would push her into taking him at once, or how, if she refused him, he would let loose upon her the dogs of fate.  But once face to face with her, he found that his resolutions had dispersed like a globule of mercury under a hammer, and that he needed a few moments to scrape them together again.  So he prattled nothings while he meditated; and you would have thought that he cared for the nothings.  He had that faculty; he could mentally ride two horses at once; he would have made a good diplomatist.