married badly, or only middlin’ well anyway.  There certainly was a lot of ’em when you come to think—­not countin’ Jane and Mr. Charley, and I can’t help what happens,” she concluded sentimentally, “I ain’t ever goin’ back on Mr. Charley—­not after the way he sent me two loads of coal the winter I was laid up with rheumatism and couldn’t work.  Well, it’s about time for me to be goin’, Gabriella.  If you want me for anything, you just drop me a line to say so.  William’s children are gettin’ so big, I can come out for the day ‘most any time now, and if William’s courtin’ goes on all right, I reckon he won’t be wantin’ me much longer.  He’s been waitin’ on a young woman right steady for more’n six months, and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if something was to come of it befo’ summer.”

“Then you’d go South again, wouldn’t you?” There was a wistful sound in Gabriella’s voice as she put the question.  Miss Polly was a tiresome person, but at least she was faithful, and long habit had established a bond of tolerance, if not of affection, between them.  In the last few months Gabriella had grown to look upon her as the one living association with her childhood, and she was so lonely that she dreaded to sever the single tie with the past that still remained to her.  “I believe she’d work her fingers to the bone for me, and, of course, she can’t help being so garrulous,” she thought.

“I reckon I will, if it comes to that, but I’d hate like anything to leave you and the children,” answered Miss Polly.  “I feel somehow as if I belonged up here with you all, and I’ve grown real fond of Archibald.”

“Yes, I’d hate to give you up,” said Gabriella, as she let her go and turned back again into the room.  Her brain had worked quickly while Miss Polly was talking, and the undercurrent of gossip had helped, rather than retarded, the clearness and rapidity of her thoughts.  All her weakness, all her anger had passed.  She saw the situation without exaggeration and without illusion, for she had made her decision in the few minutes between the entrance and the departure of the seamstress.  The embittering memories of her life with George were submerged in the invigorating waves of energy that flooded her being.  Her inert body responded to the miraculous restoration of her spirit; and, while she walked swiftly from the door to the window, she had a sensation of lightness and ease as if she had just awakened from a refreshing sleep.  For seven years all the strength of her character had been drained by the supreme function of motherhood; but now her children had ceased to need the whole of her life, and she was free to belong at least in part to herself—­free to enter unrestricted into the broader human activities.  And, above all, she was free from George.  She had escaped from the humiliating bondage of her marriage; for, since he had broken the tie between them, she realized with a strange, an almost unnatural, exhilaration, how little except duty—­how little except