She stopped, and pressed in her lip with her teeth, to stay its tremor.
I was painfully affected. I knew that she had never meant to be so open
with me, and was shocked and frightened at herself. I was sorry for her,
and yet I was glad, for it seemed to me that she had given me a glimpse,
not only of the truth in her own heart, but of the truth in the hearts of
a whole order of prosperous people in these lamentable conditions, whom I
shall hereafter be able to judge more leniently, more justly.

I began to speak of Altruria, as if that were what our talk had been
leading up to, and she showed herself more intelligently interested
concerning us than any one I have yet seen in this country. We appeared,
I found, neither incredible nor preposterous to her; our life, in her
eyes, had that beauty of right living which the Americans so feebly
imagine or imagine not at all. She asked what route I had come by to
America, and she seemed disappointed and aggrieved that we placed the
restrictions we have felt necessary upon visitors from the plutocratic
world. Were we afraid, she asked, that they would corrupt our citizens or
mar our content with our institutions? She seemed scarcely satisfied when
I explained, as I have explained so often here, that the measures we had
taken were rather in the interest of the plutocratic world than of the
Altrurians; and alleged the fact that no visitor from the outside had
ever been willing to go home again, as sufficient proof that we had
nothing to fear from the spread of plutocratic ideals among us. I assured
her, and this she easily imagined, that, the better known these became,
the worse they appeared to us; and that the only concern our priors felt,
in regard to them, was that our youth could not conceive of them in their
enormity, but, in seeing how estimable plutocratic people often were,
they would attribute to their conditions the inherent good of human
nature. I said our own life was so directly reasoned from its economic
premises that they could hardly believe the plutocratic life was often an