On her dazzling height, successful and happy, she was as far removed as one could imaginably be from the repentant Magdalen of tradition.

The memory of George's face as it looked in death, floated before the austere mental vision of Gabriella, and she reflected grimly that tradition was not always the mirror of life.

For in this one case at least, the man, not the woman, had been the victim of natural law, and Florrie, fool though she was, had shown herself at the hour of requital to be stronger than fate.

By that instinctive wisdom, which is so much older, so much truer than civilization, she had triumphed over the ordination of life.
In refusing to suffer she had blunted every weapon with which Nature might have punished her in the end.

Not by virtue, since she had none, but by pure insensibility, she had escaped the wages of sin.