which came more from lack of understanding than from force of character.
Her hair was the color of a dried English walnut, rich and plentiful,
and her complexion waxen--cream wax---with lips of faint pink, and eyes
that varied from gray to blue and from gray to brown, according to the
light in which you saw them. Her hands were thin and shapely, her nose
straight, her face artistically narrow. She was not brilliant,
not active, but rather peaceful and statuesque without knowing it.
Cowperwood was carried away by her appearance. Her beauty measured up to
his present sense of the artistic. She was lovely, he thought--gracious,
dignified. If he could have his choice of a wife, this was the kind of a
girl he would like to have.

As yet, Cowperwood's judgment of women was temperamental rather than
intellectual. Engrossed as he was by his desire for wealth, prestige,
dominance, he was confused, if not chastened by considerations relating
to position, presentability and the like. None the less, the homely
woman meant nothing to him. And the passionate woman meant much. He
heard family discussions of this and that sacrificial soul among women,
as well as among men--women who toiled and slaved for their husbands
or children, or both, who gave way to relatives or friends in crises
or crucial moments, because it was right and kind to do so--but
somehow these stories did not appeal to him. He preferred to think of
people--even women--as honestly, frankly self-interested. He could
not have told you why. People seemed foolish, or at the best very
unfortunate not to know what to do in all circumstances and how to
protect themselves. There was great talk concerning morality, much
praise of virtue and decency, and much lifting of hands in righteous
horror at people who broke or were even rumored to have broken the
Seventh Commandment. He did not take this talk seriously. Already he had
broken it secretly many times. Other young men did. Yet again, he was a