She had
often been told that individuals of this temperament possessed more
depth of character than more emotional and socially facile people, and
she was prepared to woo. In comparison with Wilbur, Pauline was
accustomed to regard herself as a practical and easy-going soul, but she
was essentially a woman of fine and vigorous moral and mental purpose.
Like many of her associates in active life, however, she had become too
occupied with concrete possibilities to be able to give much thought to
her own soul anatomy, and she was glad to look up to her brother's wife
as a spiritual superior and to recognize that the burden lay on herself
to demonstrate her own worthiness to be admitted to close intimacy on
equal terms. Wilbur was to her a creature of light, and she had no doubt
that his wife was of the same ethereal composition.
Pauline was glad, too, of the opportunity really to know a countrywoman
of a type so different from her own friends. She, like Wilbur, had heard
all her life of these interesting and inspiring beings; intense,
marvellously capable, peerless, free-born creatures panoplied in
chastity and endowed with congenital mental power and bodily charms, who
were able to cook, educate children, control society and write
literature in the course of the day's employment.
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