J.'s sister and two brothers were duplicates of the parents,--hearty, stolid, and remarkably plain looking. J., the younger sister, though not the youngest in the family, was as different from her family as if she had sprung from another stock. She was slender, very pretty, with a quick, alert mind which jumped at conclusions, because labored analysis fatigued it. Above all, from the very start of life she was sensitive to a degree that perplexed her family, who were however intensely sympathetic because they adored her. This adoration arose from the fact that J. was brighter and prettier than most of her friends, and that her cleverness in many directions--music, writing, talking, handiwork--was the talk of their little group.
This sensitiveness arose from two main factors. First, an egoism fostered by the worship of her friends and the leadership of her group,--an egoism which led her to regard as a sort of insult anything disagreeable. Accustomed to praise, the least criticism implied or outspoken cut like a knife; accustomed to being waited upon, she resented physical discomfort of the slightest kind. Second, there must also have been an actual physical sensitiveness to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. that made her perceive what others failed to notice. This led to an artistry manifested by her nice work in music and decoration and also by an excessive displeasure at the inartistic.
With this training, experience, and natural temperament she should have married a rich collector of art products, who would have added her to his collection and cherished her as his most fragile possession. Instead, through the working of that strange law of contraries by which Nature strikes averages between extremes, she fell in love with a hulk of a man whose ideas on art were limited to calling a picture "pretty", who loved sports and the pleasures of the table, and whose business motto was "Beat the other guy to it." A successful man, troubled with few subtleties either of approach or conscience, he viewed the marriage relationship in the old-fashioned way and the new American indulgence. A man's wife was to be given all the clothes she wanted, servants to help run the home, ought to bear two or three children, and love her indulgent husband. As for any real intimacy, he knew nothing of it. Kindly, self-indulgent, wife-indulgent, child-indulgent, ruthless in business, he may stand as something America has produced without any effort.