code of her mother and Jane—­he was not a gentleman.  He lacked breeding, he lacked taste, he lacked the necessary education of schools; but in other ways, in ways peculiarly his own, she was beginning dimly to realize that he possessed qualities immeasurably larger than any superficial lack in his nature.  In balance, moderation, restraint—­in all the gracious attributes with which Arthur was endowed in her memory, in all the attributes she had particularly esteemed in the past—­she understood that O’Hara would undoubtedly fall below her inherited standards.  But, failing in these things, he had been able to command her respect by the sheer force of his character.  Though he had, as he had confessed to her, gone down into hell, she could not talk to him for an hour without recognizing that he had never lost a natural chivalry of mind beside which the cultivated chivalry of manner appeared as exotic as an orchid in a hothouse.  Even Arthur, she was aware, would have lied to her for her own good; but she would have trusted O’Hara to speak the truth to her at any cost.  In this, as well as in his practical efficiency, and his crude yet vital optimism, he embodied, she felt, the triumphs and the failures of American democracy—­this democracy of ugly fact and of fine ideals, of crooked deeds and of straight feeling, of little codes and of large adventures, of puny lives and of heroic deaths—­this democracy of the smoky present and the clear future.  “If this is our raw material to-day,” she thought hopefully, “what will the finished and signed product of to-morrow be?”

“Gabriella, ain’t these lovely?”

Whirling out of the sunshine, she saw Miss Polly holding a rustic basket of primroses and cowslips.  “Mr. O’Hara wants to know if he may speak to you for a minute before you go out?”

“Oh, yes, I’m not in a hurry this morning.”  Then Miss Polly disappeared and an instant later the vacant space in the doorway was filled exuberantly by O’Hara.

“I wanted to be the first to wish you a happy birthday,” he began, a little shyly, a little awkwardly, though his face was flushing with pleasure.

“The flowers are wonderful!” For a minute, while she answered him, he seemed to be a part of the unreal intense brightness of the world outside—­of that magic world where the elm tree and the grass and the sunny street were all imprisoned in crystal.  He diffused a glowing consciousness of success, a sanguine faith in the inherent goodness of experience.  For, as she had discovered long ago, O’Hara was one of those who stood not for the elimination of struggle, but for the complete acceptance of life.  He had sprung out of ugliness, he had lived intimately with evil; and yet more than any one she had ever known, he seemed to her to radiate the simple, uncalculating joy of living.  He was the strongest person she knew, as well as the happiest.  He had never evaded facts, never feared a risk, never shirked an issue, never lacked the hardy, adventurous courage of battle.  In his own words, life had never “found him a quitter.”