But, failing in these things, he had been able to command her respect by the sheer force of his character.

Though he had, as he had confessed to her, gone down into hell, she could not talk to him for an hour without recognizing that he had never lost a natural chivalry of mind beside which the cultivated chivalry of manner appeared as exotic as an orchid in a hothouse.

Even Arthur, she was aware, would have lied to her for her own good; but she would have trusted O'Hara to speak the truth to her at any cost.

In this, as well as in his practical efficiency, and his crude yet vital optimism, he embodied, she felt, the triumphs and the failures of American democracy--this democracy of ugly fact and of fine ideals, of crooked deeds and of straight feeling, of little codes and of large adventures, of puny lives and of heroic deaths--this democracy of the smoky present and the clear future.

"If this is our raw material to-day," she thought hopefully, "what will the finished and signed product of to-morrow be ?" "Gabriella, ain't these lovely ?" Whirling out of the sunshine, she saw Miss Polly holding a rustic basket of primroses and cowslips.