Yes, he must be taken far away
from all these provincial and narrowing associations.
But all this was mere detail. The big problem was how to bring
her father round. He couldn't realize what Victor Dorn would be
after she had taken him in hand. He would see only Victor Dorn,
the labor agitator of Remsen City, the nuisance who put
mischievous motives into the heads of ``the hands''--the man who
made them think they had heads when they were intended by the
Almighty to be simply hands. How reconcile him to the idea of
accepting this nuisance, this poor, common member of the working
class as a son-in-law, as the husband of the daughter he wished
to see married to some one of the ``best'' families?
On the face of it, the thing was impossible. Why, then, did not
Jane despair? For two reasons. In the first place, she was in
love, and that made her an optimist. Somehow love would find the
way. But the second reason--the one she hid from herself deep in
the darkest sub-cellar of her mind, was the real reason. It is
one matter to wish for a person's death. Only a villainous
nature can harbor such a wish, can admit it except as a hastily
and slyly in-crawling impulse, to be flung out the instant it is
discovered. It is another matter to calculate--very secretly,
very unconsciously--upon a death that seems inevitable anyhow.
Jane had only to look at her father to feel that he would not be
spared to her long.
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