But Gabriella, patiently stitching bias velvet bands on the brim of a straw hat for the early spring trade, felt that she was sustained neither by the pleasures of vanity nor by the sounder consolations of virtue.  Her philosophy was quite as simple, if not so material, as Madame’s.  Human nature was divided between the victors and the victims, and the chief thing was not to let oneself become a victim.  Her theory, like those of greater philosophers, was rooted not in reason, but in character, and she believed in life with all the sanguine richness of her blood.  Of course it was a struggle, but she was one of those vital women who enjoy a struggle—­who choose any aspect of life in preference to the condition of vegetative serenity.  Unhappiness, which is so largely a point of view, an attitude of mind, had passed over her at a time when many women would have been consecrated to inconsolable misery.  She was penniless, she was unloved, she was deserted by her husband, she had lost, in a few weeks, her friends, her home, and her family, and she faced the future alone, except for her dependent and helpless children—­yet in spite of these things, though she was thoughtful, worried, and often anxious, she realized that deep down in her the essential core of her being was not unhappy.  When she had tried and failed, and lost her health and her children—­if such sorrows ever came to her, then there would be time enough for unhappiness.  Now, she was only twenty-seven; the rich, wonderful world surrounded her; and this world, even if she put love out of her life, was brimming over with beauty.  It was good to be alive; it was good to watch the crowd in the street, to see the sunlight on the pavement, to taste the air, to feel the murmurous currents of the city flow around her as she walked home in the twilight.  It was good to earn her bread and to go back in the evening to the joyful shouts of two well and happy children.  She saw it all as an adventure—­the whole of life—­and the imperative necessity was to keep to the last the ardent heart of the true adventurer.  While she stitched with flying fingers, there passed before her the pale sad line of the victims—­of those who had resigned themselves to unhappiness.  She saw her mother, anxious, pensive, ineffectual, with her widow’s veil, her drooping eyelids, and her look of mournful acquiescence, as of one who had grown old expecting the worst of life; she saw poor Jane, tragic, martyred, with the feeble virtue and the cloying sweetness of all the poor Janes of this world; and she saw Uncle Meriweather wearing his expression of worried and resentful helplessness, as if he had been swept onward against his will by forces which he did not understand.  All these people were victims, and from these people she had sprung.  Their blood was her blood; their traditions were her traditions; their religion was her religion; even their memories were her memories.  But something else, which was not theirs, was in her nature, and this something else had been born in the instant when she revolted against them.  Perhaps the fighting spirit of her father—­of that father who had gone out like a flame in his youth had battled on her side when she had turned against the inertia and decay which had walled in her girlhood.