Upstairs, with her knitting on her lap and her feet on the fender, Miss Polly looked up to observe:  “You’re late, Gabriella.  You must have walked all the way.”

“Yes, I walked all the way.  Mr. O’Hara joined me.”

“Where did you run across him?”

“Just as I left the shop.  He was walking down Fifth Avenue.”

“Do you reckon he was waitin’ outside?”

“Oh, no, he said he had been up to Fifty-ninth Street on business.”

“Well, the walk certainly did you good.  You are bloomin’ like a rose.”

“The air was delicious, and I really like talking to Mr. O’Hara.  He is quite interesting after you get over the first impression, and he isn’t nearly so ignorant about things as I imagined.  He has thought a great deal even if he hasn’t read very much.  It’s wonderful, isn’t it, what the West can do with a man?  Now, if he’d stayed in New York he would have been merely impossible, but because he has lived out of doors he has achieved a certain distinction.  I can understand a woman falling in love with him just because of his force and his bigness.  They are the qualities a woman likes most, I think.”

“He must have made a great deal of money.”

“Yes, he’s rich, and that’s a good thing.  I like money tremendously, though I used to think that I didn’t.  I wonder if he had been poor if I should have liked him quite so much?” she asked herself honestly.

“I don’t ’spose you could ever—­ever bring yourself to think of him, honey?  It would be a mighty good thing in some ways.”

Gabriella, being in a candid mood, pondered the question without subterfuge or evasion.  “Of course I’ve passed the sentimental age,” she answered.  “If Mr. O’Hara had been poor, I suppose I should never have thought of him; but his money does make a difference.  It stands for success, achievement, and ability, and I like all those qualities.  Then he is rough in many ways, but he isn’t a bit vulgar.  He has genuine character.  There is absolutely no pretence about him.”

“You could catch him in a minute,” replied Miss Polly hopefully, animated by the inveterate match-making instinct of her class.

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—­”