As she bent over her sewing the thin pure lines of her body had a look of arrested energy, of relaxed but exuberant vitality.
"You won't go to the dance to-night, will you, Gabriella ?" inquired Mrs.
Carr nervously.
"No, I'm not going," answered the girl regretfully, for she loved dancing, and her white organdie dress, trimmed with quillings of blue ribbon, lay upstairs on the bed.

"I'll never dance again if only Jane won't go back to Charley.

I'll work my fingers to the bone to help her take care of the children." "I'll never, never go back," chanted Jane with feverish passion.
"But I thought Arthur Peyton was coming for you," said Mrs.Carr.

"He will be so disappointed." "Oh, he'll understand--he'll have to," replied Gabriella carelessly.
The sunshine faded slowly from the hyacinths on the window-sill, and drawing her crocheted cape of purple wool closer about her, Mrs.Carr moved a little nearer the fireplace.

Outside the March wind was blowing with a melancholy sound up the long straight street, and rocking the glossy boughs of an old magnolia tree in the yard From the shining leaves of the tree a few drops of water fell on the brick pavement, where several joyous sparrows were drinking, and farther off, as bright as silver in the clear wind, a solitary church spire rose above the huddled roofs of the town.