Gabriella laughed merrily. "Oh, yes, I might capture him if I went questing for him. I am not a child. But put that out of your head forever, Miss Polly. I have given him clearly to understand that there must be no nonsense, though, for the matter of that, I doubt if he needed the warning. There is an Alice." "I reckon it would take more than an Alice to stand in the way if you wanted him," insisted the little seamstress, possessed by an obstinate conviction that fate could provide no happiness apart from marriage. "Perhaps. But you see I don't want him." Gabriella had become perfectly serious, and to Miss Polly's amazement a hint of petulance showed in her manner. "Everything of that kind was over for me long ago. I never think of love now, and if I did there wouldn't be but one--but one--" "I know, honey," agreed Miss Polly, suddenly softened, "and I'd give anything on earth if you and Arthur could come together again." "It wouldn't be any use. I made my choice, and I have had to abide by it. He could never forgive me--". She stopped as if she were choking, and Miss Polly said sympathetically: "Well, I wish he had a chance to, that's all. Why don't you run down to Richmond for a few days this spring to see your folks? Your ma and all would be so glad to see you, and it ain't as if you had the children to keep you back. The thing that worries me," she added with feeling, "is the thought of your spendin' the summer here without the children. If Archibald goes to camp from school and Fanny joins Jane at the White Sulphur Springs as soon as her school is out, you won't have them at all, will you?" "No, but they will be happy; that is the only thing that matters." "It seems all wrong to me. What do you get out of life, honey?" "What do any of us get out of it, dear little Miss Polly, except the joy of triumphing? It's overcoming that really matters, nothing else, and it is the same thing to you and to me that it is to the man downstairs. I am happy because in my little way I stood the test of struggle, and so are you, and so is Mr. O'Hara." "But you're young yet, and it ain't natural for you to live as you're doin'. Lots of women marry when they're older than you are." "Oh, yes, if they want to--" For a minute the little seamstress rattled her newspaper while she looked at her without replying. Then, after folding the paper, and removing her spectacles, she asked grimly: "Can you look me in the eyes, Gabriella, and tell me that you ain't still hankerin' after Arthur?" The blush of a girl made the business-like Gabriella appear as young and as piquantly feminine as her daughter. "No, Miss Polly, I cannot," she answered with incomparable directness; "I have loved Arthur all my life." "That's just what I thought all along, and yet you went off and married somebody else." Excited by the unexpected confession, Miss Polly was quivering with sympathy.