Here they are, all in a row:
Reason Number One.—She was not quite sure of Jerome—quite sure, perhaps, in regard to his affections, but not his intentions. Love is much, but not everything, and a lover surrounded by difficulties is not to be depended upon matrimonially.
Number Two.—She was as resolutely bent upon getting out of this mean, sordid life as ever, and what way was there but this way?
Number Three.—Rube was rich, and Rube’s wife would be rich, too. For her part, she was sick and tired of poverty. Poverty, in a world governed by wealth, is the most unpardonable sin in that world’s decalogue.
Number Four.—Rube was in “society,” and what ambitious woman ever yet saved her soul outside the magic circle of society?
Number Five.—Rube was an aristocrat, and Rube’s wife would be ex necessitate rei, an aristocrat also. Her Creator, she believed, had intended her for an aristocrat; otherwise why had He endowed her with intellect, beauty, and the power to sway men’s passions?
Number Six.—The fact that she did not love Rube had, in reality, nothing to do with Rube’s eligibility as a husband. He would make a very good one, an infinitely better one than none at all!
Of course, she would be paying a tremendous price for all these worldly advantages. Mell was aware of that all the while, but after deducting from the gross weight of their true value the real or approximate weight of their possible evils and disadvantages, she would undoubtedly still be getting the best of a good bargain.
What is life but an enigmatical offset of losses and gain—so much gain on the one hand, so much loss on the other? And what was this transaction between herself and Rube but a repetition, under a somewhat different formula, of those mathematical problems worked out on her slate at school? It was all very simple.