y experience--always exaggerate the importance of passion.
Almost without exception, it is by way of passion that a man and a
woman approach each other. It is, of necessity, the exterior that
first comes into view. Thus, all that youth and inexperience can know
about love is its aspect of passion. Because Jane had again and again
in her five grown-up years experienced men falling passionately in love
with her, she fancied she was an expert in matters of love. In fact,
she had still everything to learn.

On the way home she, assuming that the affair was as good as settled,
that she and Victor Dorn were lovers, was busy with plans for the
future. Victor Dorn had made a shrewd guess at the state of her mind.
She had no intention of allowing him to pursue his present career.
That was merely foundation. With the aid of her love and council, and
of her father's money and influence, he--he and she--would mount to
something really worth while--something more than the petty politics of
a third rate city in the West. Washington was the proper arena for his
talents; they would take the shortest route to Washington. No trouble
about bringing him around; a man so able and so sensible as he would
not refuse the opportunity to do good on a grand scale. Besides--he
must be got away from his family, from these doubtless good and kind
but certainly not very high class associates of his, and from Selma
Gordon. The idea of his comparing HER with Selma Gordon! He had not
done so aloud, but she knew what was in his mind. 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 re