Why should she
cramp her soul to this one issue, when the same soul could spend itself
upon the greater motives and in the larger circle? A wide world of
influence had opened up before her; position, power, adulation, could all
have been hers, as John Appleton and Jim's father had said. She might
have moved in well-trodden ways, through gardens of pleasure, lived a
life where all would be made easy, where she would be shielded at every
turn, and her beauty would be flattered by luxury into a constant glow.
She was not so primitive, so unintellectual, as not to have thought of
this, else her decision would have had less importance; she would have
been no more than an infatuated emotional woman with a touch of second
class drama in her nature. She had thought of it all, and she had made
her choice. The easier course was the course for meaner souls, and she
had not one vein of thin blood nor a small idea in her whole nature. She
had a heart and mind for great issues. She believed that Jim had a great
brain, and would and could accomplish great things. She knew that he had
in him the strain of hereditary instinct--his mother's father had ended a
brief life in a drunken duel on the Mississippi, and Jim's boyhood had
never had discipline or direction, or any strenuous order.
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