``And I've got to warn you,'' Selma went on, ``that I am going to
do whatever I can to keep you from hindering him. Not because I
love him, but because I owe it to the cause. He belongs to it,
and I must help him be single-hearted for it. You could only be
a bad influence in his life. I think you would like to be a
sincere woman; but you can't. Your class is too strong for you.
So--it would be wrong for Victor Dorn to love and to marry you.
I think he realizes it and is struggling to be true to himself.
I intend to help him, if I can.''
Jane smiled cruelly. ``What hypocrisy!'' she said, and turned
and walked away.
VIII
In America we have been bringing up our women like men, and
treating them like children. They have active minds with nothing
to act upon. Thus they are driven to think chiefly about
themselves. With Jane Hastings, self-centering took the form of
self-analysis most of the time. She was intensely interested in
what she regarded as the new development of her character. This
definite and apparently final decision for the narrow and the
ungenerous. In fact, it was no new development, but simply a
revelation to herself of her own real character. She was seeing
at last the genuine Jane Hastings, inevitable product of a
certain heredity in a certain environment. The high thinking and
talking, the idealistic aspiration were pose and pretense. Jane
Hastings was a selfish, self-absorbed person, ready to do almost
any base thing to gain her ends, ready to hate to the uttermost
any one who stood between her and her object.
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