Like most women whose love had ended not in unfulfilment, but in satiety and bitterness, she was inclined to deny the supreme importance of the passion in the scheme of life.

As a deserted wife and the mother of two children, she felt that she could live for years without the desire, without even the thought of romantic love in her mind.

"I wonder why I, who have known and lost love, should be so much freer from that obsession than poor Miss Danton, who has never been loved in her life ?" she asked herself while she carried the supper tray down the long hall and into the living-room.
Some hours later, when the children were asleep, and Gabriella sat darning Archibald's stockings beside the kerosene lamp, she described to Miss Polly the scene with Madame and Mrs.Pletheridge.
"I don't know how it will end.

She may discharge me to-morrow," she deliberated, as she cut off a length of black darning cotton, and bent over to thread her needle.

"I wonder what I ought to do ?" "Well, now, ain't that exactly like you, Gabriella," scolded Miss Polly; "but when you come to think of it," she conceded after a minute or two, "I reckon we're all made like that in the beginning.