Naturally one of her chief desires was to be on loving terms with her brother’s wife, and to do everything in her power to add to Selma’s happiness.  She summoned her women friends to meet her sister-in-law at afternoon tea.  All of these called on the bride, and some of them invited her to their houses.  They were busy women like Pauline herself, intent in their several ways on their vocations or avocations.  They were disposed to extend the right hand of fellowship to Mrs. Littleton, whom they without exception regarded as interesting in appearance, but they had no leisure for immediate intimacy with her.  Having been introduced to her and having scheduled her in their minds as a new and desirable acquaintance, they went their ways, trusting chiefly to time to renew the meeting and to supply the evidence as to the stranger’s social value.  Busy people in a large city are obliged to argue that new-comers should win their spurs, and that great minds, valuable opinions, and moving social graces are never crushed by inhumanity, but are certain sooner or later to gain recognition.  Therefore after being very cordial and expressing the hope of seeing more of her in the future, every one departed and left Selma to her duties and her opportunities as Littleton’s wife, without having the courtesy to indicate that they considered her a superior woman.

Pauline regarded this behavior on the part of her friends as normal, and having done her social duty in the afternoon tea line, without a suspicion that Selma was disappointed by the experience, she gave herself up to the congenial undertaking of becoming intimate with her sister-in-law.  She ascribed Selma’s reserve, and cold, serious manner partly to shyness due to her new surroundings, and partly to the spiritual rigor of the puritan conscience and point of view.  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.