could she be supposed to resemble a star—­that she was not shining, not remote, not even “ideal” in Arthur’s delicate sense of the word.  She had known the horrors of poverty, of that bitter genteel poverty which must keep up an appearance at any cost; and she could never forget the grim days, after the death of Uncle Beverly Blair, when they had shivered in fireless rooms and gone for weeks without butter on their bread.  For the one strong quality in Mrs. Carr’s character was the feeling she spoke of complacently, though modestly, as “proper pride”; and this proper pride, which was now resisting Gabriella’s struggle for independence, had in the past resisted quite as stubbornly the thought of an appeal to the ready charity of her masculine relatives.  To seek a man’s advice had been from her girlhood the primal impulse of Mrs. Carr’s nature; but, until Fate had starved her into sincerity, she had kept alive the ladylike fiction that she was in need of moral, not material, assistance.

“Of course, if there were any other way, Arthur,” said Gabriella, remembering the earlier battles with her mother, and eager to compromise when she could do so with dignity; “but how can I go on being dependent on Cousin Jimmy and Uncle Meriweather.  Neither of them is rich, and Cousin Jimmy has a large family.”

Of course she was reasonable.  The most disagreeable thing about Gabriella, Jane had once said, was her inveterate habit of being reasonable.  But then Jane, who was of an exquisite sensibility, felt that Gabriella’s reasonableness belonged to a distinctly lower order of intelligence.  When all was said, Gabriella saw clearly because she had a practical mind, and a practical mind is usually engrossed with material matters.

“I understand exactly how you feel, dear, but if only you could go on just as you are for a few years longer,” said Arthur, sticking to his original idea with a tenacity which made it possible for him to argue for hours and yet remain exactly where he had started.  Though they talked all night, though she convinced him according to all the laws and principles of logic, she knew that he would still think precisely what he had thought in the beginning, for his conviction was rooted, deeper than reason, in the unconquerable prejudices which had passed from the brain into the very blood of his race.  He would probably say at the end:  “I admit all that you tell me, Gabriella, but my sentiment is against it;” and this sentiment, overruling sense, would insist, with sublime obstinacy, that Gabriella must not work in a shop.  It would ignore, after the exalted habit of sentiment, such merely sordid facts as poverty and starvation (who ever heard of a woman of good family starving in Virginia?), and, at last, if Gabriella were really in love with Arthur, it would triumph over her finer judgment and reduce her to submission.  But while she watched him, in the very minute when, failing for words, he caught her in his arms, she said to herself, suddenly chilled and determined:  “I must get it over to-night, and I’ve got to be honest.”  The scent of the hyacinths floated to her again, but it seemed to bring a cold wind, as if a draught had blown in through the closed slats of the shutters.