Was
not here a man trained in the same school of environment in
which she had been trained--a man with social position and
culture such as she had been taught to consider as the prime
essentials to congenial association?
Did not her best judgment point to this young English nobleman,
whose love she knew to be of the sort a civilized woman
should crave, as the logical mate for such as herself?
Could she love Clayton? She could see no reason why she
could not. Jane was not coldly calculating by nature, but
training, environment and heredity had all combined to teach
her to reason even in matters of the heart.
That she had been carried off her feet by the strength of
the young giant when his great arms were about her in the
distant African forest, and again today, in the Wisconsin
woods, seemed to her only attributable to a temporary mental
reversion to type on her part--to the psychological appeal of
the primeval man to the primeval woman in her nature.
If he should never touch her again, she reasoned, she would
never feel attracted toward him. She had not loved him, then.
It had been nothing more than a passing hallucination,
super-induced by excitement and by personal contact.
Excitement would not always mark their future relations,
should she marry him, and the power of personal contact
eventually would be dulled by familiarity.
Again she glanced at Clayton.
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